warmer! 5 

In the 
Wilderness 




Houghton, Mifflin <S?0 



p^ Verside Literatur e Series 

.15 

\9o5 





Copyriglit]^". 



^05 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
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^))t Kitiergiinr iLittrature ^tms 



IN THE WILDERNESS 



BY 



CHAELES DUDLEY WAENEE 



WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



Prescribed by the Begents of the University 
of the State of New York for the examination 
for the preliminary certificate in English 




HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

BoBton : 4 Park Street ; New York : 85 Fifth Avenue 
Cliicago : 378-388 Wabaah Avenue 



CONTENTS ' \C\0^ 

FAGB 
How I KILLED A BeAR 1 

Lost rN the Woods n 

A Fight with a Trout 23 

A-HuNTiNG OF the Deer 31 

A Character Study 48 

Campes'g Out 74 

A Wilderness Romance 88 

What Some People call Pleasure 101 

How Spring came in New England 118 



COPYRIGHT 1S7S BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

COPYRIGHT 1888 AND 1905 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & CO. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



1 

UCT ,11 l^ 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

Like Mr. Aldrich, who played with his boyhood in The 
Story of a Bad Boy^ Mr. Warner has treated himself as a 
sort of third person in Being a Boy^ the scenes of which 
are laid in a primitive Massachusetts country neighborhood. 
The place which stood for its portrait in the book is Charle- 
mont, near the eastern opening of the Hoosac tunnel. Here 
Mr. Warner spent his boyhood, removing to the place, when 
his father died, from Plainfield, in the same State, where he 
was born September 12, 1829. He was five years old when 
he was taken to Charlemont, and he remained there eight 
years, and then removed to Cazenovia, N. Y. His guardian 
intended him for business life, and placed him after his 
school days as clerk in a store, but his intellectual ambition 
was strong, and against all adverse fates he secured a col- 
legiate education at Hamilton College, where he graduated 
in 1851. His coUege many years later conferred on him 
the degree of Doctor of Letters. 

When he was in college he showed his bent for literature 
by contributing to the magazines of the day, and shortly 
after graduating compiled a Booh of Eloquence* For the 
next half dozen years he was busy establishing himself in 
life, choosing the law at first as his profession, but really 
practicing the various pursuits which should finally qualify 
him for his predestined vocation as a man of letters. He 
spent two years in frontier life with a surveying party in 
Missouri, mainly to secure a more robust condition of body ; 
he lectured, did hack work, wrote letters to journals, looked 
wistfully at public life and oratory, opened a law office in 
Chicago, and took what legal business he could find. 



IV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

It was while he was there living by miscellaneous ven- 
tures that J. R. Hawley, formerly Senator from Connecti- 
cut, was attracted by the letters which Mr. Warner was con- 
tributing to his paper, the Hartford Press, and invited his 
correspondent to remove to Hartford and become assistant 
editor of the paper. This was shortly before the opening 
of the war for the Union. When Mr. Hawley entered the 
army, Mr. Warner became editor in chief ; and when the 
Press became merged in the older and more substantial 
Courant, he became one of the proprietors and editors of 
that paper. 

In that position he remained until his death, although 
in his last years he was relieved from much of the office 
work of an editor. It was in connection with his journal- 
istic duties that his first real stroke in literature was made. 
He was busy with the political discussions in which the press 
was involved, and most of his writing was of this sort. But 
his morning recreation in, his garden suggested to him the 
relief of writing playful sketches for his paper, drawn from 
this occupation, and the popularity attending them led to 
a collection of the sketches in the well-known volume My 
Summer in a Garden, 

In 1868 Mr. Warner went to Europe for a year and 
turned his travel-experience into sketches which were gath- 
ered into Saunterings. This was the beginning of his more 
distinctly literary life. He found his pleasure as well as his 
recuperation thereafter chiefly in rambling and in noting 
men and things. The more distinctive of his books of travel 
growing out of this habit were Baddeck and That Sort of 
Thing, which is a humorous sketch of a journey in Nova 
Scotia and among the scenes of Longfellow's Evangeline ; 
books of eastern travel, My Winter on the Nile and In the 
Levant; rambles chiefly in the Spanish peninsula under 
the name A Roundabout Journey, and a number of papers 
relating to American life and scenery gathered into the two 
volumes Studies in the South and West and Our Italy^ 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH v 

a warm eulogy of southern California. A genuine love of 
nature bore rich fruit in the Adirondack sketches In the 
Wilderness, which form the contents of this present 
volume. 

By a natural transfer of his own habit into a more purely 
literary expression, Mr. Warner wrote a book, half story^ 
half travel, entitled Their Pilgrimage, which carried sev- 
eral characters from one watering-place in America to an- 
other, enabling him thus to sketch manners and make 
observations in a light, satiric vein, on some phases of 
American life. This venture it was that led him proba- 
bly into the more positive field of fictitious literature^ and 
he produced A Little Journey in the Worlds which, under 
the guise of story, was really a serious inquiry into the 
tendencies of social life when affected strongly by the in- 
sidious influence of wealth, especially newly-gotten wealth. 
The publication of this novel led to the writing of two 
other novels, The Golden House and That Fortune, pub- 
lished at intervals of a few years. These novels carried 
forward some of the inquiries started in A Little Journey 
in the World, and the reappearance of certain characters, 
with a further delineation of their experience, gives the three 
books something of the form of a trilogy. 

For several years Mr. Warner held an editorial position 
on Harper's Monthly, and many of his contributions were 
made to that magazine. The light, suggestive essay, best 
illustrated by his Backlog Studies, is perhaps the form of 
literature with which he is most identified, but the serious 
side of his nature is never held distinct from the humorous, 
as the vein of humor also runs through his more solid work. 
His interest in literature was always very strong, and led 
him into the delivery of some forcible addresses at college 
anniversaries and into the editorship of the American Men 
of Letters series, to which he contributed the volume on 
Washington Irving, who was his first great admiration in 
modern literature. He also conducted, as editor in chief, 



vi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

the extensive work entitled Library of the World's Best 
Literature, His interest in literature and travel was not 
that of a dilettante. His humor is scarcely more promi- 
nent than his earnest thoughtfulness, and he gave practical 
expression to his thought in the part which he took in pub- 
lic affairs in Hartford and in the moving question of prison 
reform. 

Mr. Warner died in Hartford, Conn., October 20, 1900- 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR 



So many conflicting accounts have appeared about 
my casual encounter with an Adirondack bear last 
summer, that in justice to the public, to myself, and 
to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement 
of the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion 
to kill a bear, that the celebration of the exploit may 
be excused. 

The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. 
I was not hunting for a bear, and I have no reason to 
suppose that a bear was looking for me. The fact is, 
that we were both out blackberrying, and met by 
chance, — the usual way. There is among the Adiron- 
dack visitors always a great deal of conversation about 
bears, — a general expression of the wish to see one 
in the woods, and much speculation as to how a person 
would act if he or she chanced to meet one. But 
bears are scarce and timid, and appear only to a 
favored few. 

It was a warm day in August, just the sort of day 
when an adventure of any kind seemed impossible. 
But it occurred to the housekeepers at our cottage — 
there were four of them — to send me to the clearing, 
on the mountain back of the house, to pick blackber- 
ries. It was rather a series of small clearings, run- 
ning up into the forest, much overgrown with bushes 
and briers, and not unromantic. Cows pastured there, 



2 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 

penetrating through the leafy passages from one open- 
ing to another, and browsing among the bushes. I 
was kindly furnished with a six-quart pail, and told 
not to be gone long. 

Not from any predatory instinct, but to save appear- 
ances, I took a gun. It adds to the manly aspect of a 
person with a tin pail if he also carries a gun. It was 
possible I might start up a partridge ; though how I 
was to hit him, if he started up instead of standing 
still, puzzled me. Many people use a shot-gun for 
partridges. I prefer the rifle : it makes a clean job 
of death, and does not prematurely stuff the bird with 
globules of lead. The rifle was a Sharp's, carrying a 
ball cartridge (ten to the pound), — an excellent wea- 
pon belonging to a friend of mine, who had intended, 
for a good many years back, to kill a deer with it. He 
could hit a tree with it — if the wind did nofi blow, 
and the atmosphere was just right, and the tree was 
not too far off — nearly every time. Of course, the 
tree must have some size. Needless to say that I was 
at that time no sportsman. Years ago I killed a robin 
under the most humiliating circumstances. The bird 
was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a big shot-gun 
pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on 
the fence, with the muzzle more than ten feet from 
the bird, shut both eyes, and pulled the trigger. 
When I got up to see what had happened, the robin 
was scattered about under the tree in more than a 
thousand pieces, no one of which was big enough to 
enable a naturalist to decide from it to what species it 
belonged. This disgusted me with the life of a sports- 
man. I mention the incident to show, that, although 
I went blackberrying armed, there was not much in- 
equality between me and the bear. 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR o 

In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen. The 
summer before, our colored cook, accompanied by a 
little girl of the vicinage, was picking berries there 
one day, when a bear came out of the woods, and 
walked towards them. The girl took to her heels, and 
escaped. Aunt Chloe was paralyzed with terror. In- 
stead of attempting to run, she sat down on the 
ground where she was standing, and began to weep 
and scream, giving herself up for lost. The bear was 
bewildered by this conduct. He approached and 
looked at her ; he walked around and surveyed her. 
Probably he had never seen a colored person before, 
and did not know whether she would agree with him : 
at any rate, after watching her a few moments, he 
turned about, and went into the forest. This is an 
authentic instance of the delicate consideration of a 
bear, and is much more remarkable than the forbear- 
ance towards the African slave of the well-known lion, 
because the bear had no thorn in his foot. 

When I had climbed the hill, I set up my rifle 
against a tree, and began picking berries, lured on 
from bush to bush by the black gleam of fruit (that 
always promises more in the distance than it realizes 
when you reach it) ; penetrating farther and farther, 
through leaf-shaded cow-paths flecked with sunlight, 
into clearing after clearing. I could hear on all sides 
the tinkle of bells, the cracking of sticks, and the 
stamping of ^cattle that were taking refuge in the 
thicket from the flies. Occasionally, as I broke 
through a covert, I encountered a meek cow, who 
stared at me stupidly for a second, and then shambled 
off into the brush. I became accustomed to this dumb 
society, and picked on in silence, attributing all the 
wood noises to the cattle, thinking nothing of any 



4 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 

real bear. In point of fact, however, I was thinking 
all the time of a nice romantic bear, and, as I picked, 
was composing a &tory about a generous she-bear who 
had lost her cub, and who seized a small girl in this 
very wood, carried her tenderly off to a cave, and 
brought her up on bear's milk and honey. When the 
girl got big enough to run away, moved by her in-» 
herited instincts, she escaped, and came into the valley 
to her father's house (this part of the story was to be 
worked out, so that the child would know her father 
by some family resemblance, and have some language 
in which to address him), and told him where the bear 
lived. The father took his gun, and, guided by the 
unfeeling daughter, went into the woods and shot the 
bear, who never made any resistance, and only, when 
dying, turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer. 
The moral of the tale was to be kindness to animals. 

I was in the midst of this tale, when I happened to 
look some rods away to the other edge of the clearing, 
and there was a bear ! He was standing on his hind- 
legs, and doing just what I was doing, — picking 
blackberries. With one paw he bent down the bush, 
while with the other he clawed the berries into his 
mouth, — green ones and all. To say that I was as- 
tonished is inside the mark. I suddenly discovered 
that I didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about 
the same moment the bear saw me, stopped eating 
berries, and regarded me with a glad surprise. It is 
all very well to imagine what you would do under such 
circumstances. Probably you would n't do it : I did n't. 
The bear dropped down on his fore-feet, and came 
slowly towards me. Climbing a tree was of no use, 
with so good a climber in the rear. If I started to 
run, I had no doubt the bear would give chase ; and 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR 5 

although a bear cannot run down hill as fast as he 
can run up hill, yet I felt that he could get over this 
rough, brush-tangled ground faster than I could. 

The bear was approaching. It suddenly occurred 
to me how I could divert his mind until I could fall 
back upon my military base. My pail was nearly full 
of excellent berries, — much better than the bear 
could pick himself. I put the pail on the ground, and 
slowly backed away from it, keeping my eye, as beast- 
tamers do, on the bear. The ruse succeeded. 

The bear came up to the berries, and stopped. Not 
accustomed to eat out of a pail, he tipped it over, and 
nosed about in the fruit, " gorming " (if there is such 
a word) it down, mixed with leaves and dirt, like a 
pig. The bear is a worse feeder than the pig. When- 
ever he disturbs a maple-sugar camp in the spring, he 
always upsets the buckets of sirup, and tramples 
round in the sticky sweets, wasting more than he eats. 
The bear's manners are thoroughly disagreeable. 

As soon as my enemy's head was down, I started 
and ran. Somewhat out of breath, and shaky, I 
reached my faithful rifle. It was not a moment too 
soon. I heard the bear crashing through the brush 
after me. Enraged at my duplicity, he was now com- 
ing on with blood in his eye. I felt that the time of 
one of us was probably short. The rapidity of thought 
at such moments of peril is well known. I thought 
an octavo volume, had it illustrated and published, sold 
fifty thousand copies, and went to Europe on the pro- 
ceeds, while that bear was loping across the clearing. 
As I was cocking the gun, I made a hasty and unsatis- 
factory review of my whole life. I noted that, even in 
such a compulsory review, it is almost impossible to 
think of any good thing you have done. The sins 



6 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 

come out uncommonly strong. I recollected a news- 
paper subscription I had delayed paying years and 
years ago, until both editor and newspaper were dead, 
and which now never could be paid to all eternity. 

The bear was coming on. 

I tried to remember what I had read about encoun?- 
ters with bears. I could n't recall an instance in 
which a man had run away from a bear in the woods 
and escaped, although I recalled plenty where the bear 
had run from the man and got off. I tried to think 
what is the best way to kill a bear with a gun, when you 
are not near enough to club him with the stock. My 
first thought was to fire at his head ; to plant the ball 
between his eyes ; but this is a dangerous experiment. 
The bear's brain is very small ; and unless you hit 
that, the bear does not mind a bullet in his head ; that 
is, not at the time. I remembered that the instant 
death of the bear would follow a bullet planted just 
back of his fore-leg, and sent into his heart. This 
spot is also difficult to reach, unless the bear stands 
off, side towards you, like a target. I finally deter- 
mined to fire at him generally. 

The bear was coming on. 

The contest seemed to me very different from any- 
thing at Creedmoor. I had carefully read the reports 
of the shooting there ; but it was not easy to apply 
the experience I had thus acquired. I hesitated 
whether I had better fire lying on my stomach ; or 
lying on my back, and resting the gun on my toes. 
But in neither position, I reflected, could I see the 
bear until he was upon me. The range was too short ; 
and the bear would n't wait for me to examine the 
thermometer, and note the direction of the wind. 
Trial of the Creedmoor method, therefore, had to be 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR 7 

abandoned ; and I bitterly regretted that I had not 
read more accounts of offhand shooting. 

For the bear was coming on. 

I tried to fix my last thoughts upon my family. As 
my family is small, this was not difficult. Dread of 
displeasing my wife, or hurting her feelings, was up- 
permost in my mind. What would be her anxiety as 
hour after hour passed on, and I did not return ! 
TThat would the rest of the household think as the 
afternoon passed, and no blackberries came ! "What 
would be my wife's mortification when the news was 
brought that her husband had been eaten by a bear ! 
I cannot imagine any thing more ignominious than to 
have a husband eaten by a bear. And this was not 
my only anxiety. The mind at such times is not 
under control. With the gravest fears the most whim- 
sical ideas will occur. I looked beyond the mourning 
friends, and thought what kind of an epitaph they 
would be compelled to put upon the stone. Some- 
thing like this : — 

HERE LEE THE RE:^rAIXS 
OF 



EATE^r BY A BEAU 

Aug. 20, 1877. 

It is a very unheroic and even disagreeable epitaph. 
That " eaten by a bear " is intolerable. It is gTO- 
tesque. And then I thought what an inadequate lan- 
guage the English is for compact expression. It would 
not answer to put upon the stone simply " eaten ; " for 
that is indefinite, and requires explanation : it might 
mean eaten by a cannibal. This difficulty could not 
occur in the German, where essen signifies the act of 



8 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 

feeding by a man, and fresseii by a beast. How sim- 
ple the thing would be in German ! — 

HIER LIEGT 

HOCHWOHLGEBOREN" 
nERR -^^— — — ^^_^_i 



9 

GEFRESSEN 



Aug. 20, 1877. 

That explains itself. The well-born one was eaten 
by a beast, and presumably by a bear, — an animal 
that has a bad reputation since the days of Elisha. 

The bear was coming on ; he had, in fact, come on. 
I judged that he could see the whites of my eyes. All 
my subsequent reflections were confused. I raised 
the gun, covered the bear's breast with the sight, and 
let drive. Then I turned, and ran like a deer. I 
did not hear the bear pursuing. I looked back. The 
bear had stopped. He was lying down. I then re- 
membered that the best thing to do after having fired 
your gun is to reload it. I slipped in a charge, keep* 
ing my eyes on the bear. He never stirred. I walked 
back suspiciously. There was a quiver in the hind- 
legs, but no other motion. Still he might be sham- 
ming : bears often sham. To make sure, I approached, 
and put a ball into his head. He did n't mind it now : 
he minded nothing. Death had come to him with 
a merciful suddenness. He was calm in death. In 
order that he might remain so, I blew his brains out, 
and then started for home. I had killed a bear ! 

Notwithstanding my excitement, I managed to 
saunter into the house with an unconcerned air. There 
was a chorus of voices : — 

" Where are your blackberries ? " 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR Q 

" Why were you gone so long ? " 

" Where 's your pail ? " 

"I left the pail.'' 

" Left the pail ! What for ? '' 

*'A bear wanted it." 

^'^Oh, nonsense! " 

*' Well, the last I saw of it, a bear had it." 

*• Oh, come ! You did n't really see a bear ? ^' 

" Yes, but I did really see a real bear." 

*' Did he run?" 

*' Yes ; he ran after me." 

•' I don't believe a word of it. What did you do ? ** 

'' Oh ! nothing particular — except kill the bear." 

Cries of " Gammon ! " " Don't beKeve it ! '' 
*' Where 's the bear ? " 

" If you want to see the bear, you must go up into 
the woods. I couldn't bring him down alone." 

Having satisfied the household that something ex- 
traordinary had occurred, and excited the posthumous 
fear of some of them for my own safety, I went down 
into the valley to get help. The great bear-hunter, 
who keeps one of the summer boarding-houses, re- 
ceived my story with a smile of incredulity ; and the 
incredulity spread to the other inhabitants and to the 
boarders as soon as the story was known. However, 
as I insisted in all soberness, and offered to lead them 
to the bear, a party of forty or fifty people at last 
started off with me to bring the bear in. Nobody be- 
lieved there was any bear in the case ; but everybody 
whp could get a gun carried one ; and we went into 
the woods armed with guns, pistols, pitchforks, and 
sticks, against all contingencies or surprises, — a crowd 
made up mostly of scoffers and jeerers. 

But when I led the way to the fatal spot, and 



10 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 

pointed out tlie bear, lying peacefully wrapped in his 
own skin, something like terror seized the boarders, 
and genuine excitement the natives. It was a no- 
mistake bear, by George ! and the hero of the fight — 
well, I will not insist upon that. But what a proces- 
sion that was, carrying the bear home ! and what a 
congregation was speedily gathered in the valley to 
see the bear ! Our best preacher up there never drew 
anything like it on Sunday. 

And I must say that my particular friends, who 
were sportsmen, behaved very well, on the whole. 
They did n't deny that it was a bear, although they 
said it was anall for a bear. Mr. Deane, who is 
equally good with a rifle and a rod, admitted that it 
was a very fair shot. He is probably the best salmon- 
fisher in the United States, and he is an equally good 
hunter. I suppose there is no person in America who 
is more desirous to kill a moose than he. But he 
needlessly remarked, after he had examined the wound 
in the bear, that he had seen that kind of a shot made 
by a cow's horn. 

This sort of talk affected me not. When I went to 
sleep that night, my last delicious thought was, " I 've 
killed a bear ! '' 



LOST IN THE WOODS 



4 

It ought to be said, by way of explanation, that my 
being lost in the woods was not premeditated. Noth- 
ing could have been more informal. This apology 
can be necessary only to those who are familiar with 
the Adirondack literature. Any person not familiar 
with it would see the absurdity of one going to the 
Northern Wilderness with the deliberate purpose of 
writing about himself as a lost man. It may be 
true that a book about this wild tract would not be 
recognized as complete without a lost-man story in it ; 
since it is almost as easy for a stranger to get lost in 
the Adirondacks as in Boston. I merely desire to 
say that my unimportant adventure is not narrated in 
answer to the popular demand, and I do not wish to 
be held responsible for its variation from the typical 
character of such experiences. 

We had been in camp a week, on the Upper Au- 
sable Lake. This is a gem — emerald or turquoise as 
the light changes it — set in the virgin forest. It is 
not a large body of water, is irregular in form, and 
about a mile and a half in length ; but in the sweep 
of its wooded shores, and the lovely contour of the 
lofty mountains that guard it, the lake is probably the 
most charming in America. Why the young ladies 
and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex the 



12 LOST IN THE WOODS 

days and nights with hooting, and singing sentimental 
songs, is a mystery even to the laughing loon. 

I left my companions there one Saturday morning 
to return to Keene Valley, intending to fish down the 
Ausable River. The Upper Lake discharges itself 
into the Lower by a brook which winds through a 
mile and a half of swamp and woods. Out of the north 
end of the Lower Lake, which is a huge sink in the 
mountains, and mirrors the savage precipices, the 
Ausable breaks its rocky barriers, and flows through a 
wild gorge, several miles, to the valley below. Be- 
tween the Lower Lake and the settlements is an ex- 
tensive forest, traversed by a cart-path, admirably 
constructed of loose stones, roots of trees, decayed 
logs, slippery rocks, and mud. The gorge of the river 
forms its western boundary. I followed this carica- 
ture of a road a mile or more ; then gave my luggage 
to the guide to carry home, and struck off through 
the forest, by compass, to the river. I promised my- 
self an exciting scramble down this little-frequented 
canon, and a creel full of trout. There was no diffi- 
culty in finding the river, or in descending the steep 
precipice to its bed : getting into a scrape is usually 
the easiest part of it. The river is strewn with bowl- 
ders, big and little, through which the amber water 
rushes with an unceasing thunderous roar, now plung- 
ing down in white falls, then swirling round in dark 
pools. The day, already past meridian, was delight' 
f ul ; at least, the blue strip of it I could see overhead. 

Better pools and rapids for trout never were, I 
thought, as I concealed myself behind a bowlder, and 
made the first cast. There is nothing like the thrill 
of expectation over the first throw in unfamiliar 
waters. Fishing is like gambling, in that failure only 



LOST IN THE WOODS , 13 

excites hope of a fortunate throw next time. There 
was no rise to the ''leader " on the first cast, nor on 
the twenty-first; and I cautiously worked my way 
down stream, throwing right and left. When I had 
gone half a mile, my opinion of the character of the 
pools was unchanged: never were there such places 
for trout ; but the trout were out of their places. 
Perhaps they did n't care for the fly : some trout seem 
to be so unsophisticated as to prefer the worm. I 
replaced the fly with a baited hook : the worm 
squirmed; the waters rushed and roared; a cloud 
sailed across the blue : no trout rose to the lonesome 
opportunity. There is a certain companionship in the 
presence of trout, especially when you can feel them 
flopping in your fish-basket; but it became evident 
that there were no trout in this wilderness, and a 
sense of isolation for the first time came over me. 
There was no living thing near. The river had by 
this time entered a deeper gorge ; walls of rocks rose 
perpendicularly on either side, — picturesque rocks, 
painted many colors by the oxide of iron. It was not 
possible to climb out of the gorge ; it was impossible 
to find a way by the side of the river ; and getting 
down the bed, over the falls, and through the flumes, 
was not easy, and consumed time. 

Was that thunder ? Very likely. But thunder- 
showers are always brewing in these mountain-for- 
tresses, and it did not occur to me that there was any 
thing personal in it. Very soon, however, the hole 
in the sky closed in, and the rain dashed down. It 
seemed a providential time to eat my luncheon ; and 
I took shelter under a scraggy pine that had rooted 
itself in the edge of the rocky slope. The shower 
soon passed, and I continued my journej^, creeping 



14 LOST IN THE WOODS 

over the slippery rocks, and continuing to show my 
confidence in the unresponsive trout. The way grew 
wider and more grewsome. The thunder began again, 
rolling along over the tops of the mountains, and re- 
verberating in sharp concussions in the gorge : the 
lightning also darted down into the darkening pas- 
sage, and then the rain. Every enlightened being, 
even if he is in a fisherman's dress of shirt and pan- 
taloons, hates to get wet ; and I ignominiously crept 
under the edge of a sloping bowlder. It was all very 
well at first, until streams of water began to crawl 
along the face of the rock, and trickle down the back 
of my neck. This was refined misery, unheroic and 
humiliating, as suffering always is when unaccom- 
panied by resignation. 

A longer time than I knew was consumed in this 
and repeated efforts to wait for the slackening and 
renewing storm to pass away. In the intervals of 
calm I still fished, and even descended to what a 
sportsman considers incredible baseness ; I put a 
" sinker " on my line. It is the practice of the coun- 
try-folk, whose only object is to get fish, to use a good 
deal of bait, sink the hook to the bottom of the pools, 
and wait the slow appetite of the summer trout. I 
tried this also. I might as well have fished in a pork- 
barrel. It is true, that, in one deep, black, round 
pool, I lured a small trout from the bottom, and de- 
posited him in the creel; but it was an accident. 
Though I sat there in the awful silence (the roar of 
water only emphasized the stillness) full half an hour, 
I was not encouraged by another nibble. Hope, how- 
ever, did not die : I always expected to find the trout 
in the next flume ; and so I toiled slowly on, uncon- 
scious of the passing time. At each turn of the 



LOST IN THE WOODS 15 

stream I expected to see the end, and at each turn I 
saw a long, narrow stretch of rocks and foaming 
water. Climbing out of the ravine was, in most 
places, simply impossible ; and I began to look with 
interest for a slide, where bushes rooted in the scant 
earth would enable me to scale the precipice. I did 
not doubt that I was nearly through the gorge. I 
could at length see the huge form of the Giant of the 
Valley, scarred with avalanches, at the end of the 
vista ; and it seemed not far off. But it kept its dis- 
tance, as only a mountain can, while I stumbled and 
slid down the rocky way. The rain had now set in 
with persistence, and suddenly I became aware that it 
was growing dark, and I said to myself, " If you don't 
wish to spend the night in this horrible chasm, you 'd 
better escape speedily." Fortunately I reached a 
place where the face of the precipice was bush-grown, 
and with considerable labor scrambled up it. 

Having no doubt that I was within half a mile, 
perhaps within a few rods, of the house above the 
entrance of the gorge, and that, in any event, I should 
fall into the cart-path in a few minutes, I struck 
boldly into the forest, congratulating myself on 
having escaped out of the river. So sure was I of 
my whereabouts, that I did not note the bend of the 
river, nor look at my compass. The one trout in my 
basket was no burden, and I stepped lightly out. 

The forest was of hard-wood, and open, except for 
a thick undergrowth of moose-bush. It was raining, 
— in fact, it had been raining, more or less, for a 
month, — and the woods were soaked. This moose- 
bush is most annoying stuff to travel through in a 
rain ; for the broad leaves slap one in the face, and 
sop him with wet. The way grew every moment 



16 LOST IN THE WOODS 

more dingy. The heavy clouds above the thick foliage 
brought night on prematurely. It was decidedly 
premature to a near-sighted man, whose glasses the 
rain rendered useless : such a person ought to be at 
home early. On leaving the river-bank I had borne 
to the left, so as to be sure to strike either the clear- 
ing or the road, and not wander off into the measure- 
less forest. I confidently pursued this course, and 
went gayly on by the left flank. That I did not 
come to any opening or path, only showed that I had * 
slightly mistaken the distance: I was going in the 
right direction. 

I was so certain of this, that I quickened my pace, 
and got up with alacrity every time I tumbled down 
amid the slippery leaves and catching roots, and 
hurried on. And I kept to the left. It even occurred 
to me that I was turning to the left so much, that I 
might come back to the river again. It grew more 
dusky, and rained more violently ; but there was 
nothing alarming in the situation, since I knew exactly 
where I was. It was a little mortifying that I had 
miscalculated the distance : yet, so far was I from 
feeling any uneasiness about this, that I quickened my 
pace again, and, before I knew it, was in a full run ; 
that is, as full a run as a person can indulge in in the 
dusk, with so many trees in the way* No nervousness, 
but simply a reasonable desire to get there. I desired 
to look upon myself as the person " not lost, but gone 
before." As time passed, and darkness fell, and no 
clearing or road appeared, I ran a little faster. It 
didn't seem possible that the people had moved, or 
the road been changed ; and yet I was sure of my 
direction. I went on with an energy increased by the 
ridiculousness of the situation, the danger that an 



LOST IN THE WOODS 17 

experienced woodsman was in of getting home late 
for supper ; the lateness of the meal being nothing to 
the gibes of the unlost. How long I kept this course, 
and how far I went on, I do not know ; but suddenly 
I stumbled against an ill-placed tree, and sat down on 
the soaked ground, a trifle out of breath. It then 
occurred to me that I had better verify my course by 
the compass. There was scarcely light enough to dis- 
tinguish the black end of the needle. To my amaze- 
ment, the compass, which was made near Greenwich, 
was wrong. Allowing for the natural variation of the 
needle, it was absurdly wrong. It made out that I 
was going south when I was going north. It inti- 
mated, that, instead of turning to the left, I had been 
making a circuit to the right. According to the com- 
pass, the Lord only knew where I was. 

The inclination of persons in the woods to travel in 
a circle is unexplained. I suppose it arises from the 
sympathy of the legs with the brain. Most people 
reason in a circle : their minds go round and round, 
always in the same track. For the last half-hour I 
had been saying over a sentence that started itself : 
" I wonder where that road is ! " I had said it over 
till it had lost all meaning. I kept going round on it ; 
and yet I could not believe that my body had been 
travelling in a circle. Not being able to recognize 
any tracks, I have no evidence that I had so travelled, 
except the general testimony of lost men. 

The compass annoyed me. I 've known experi- 
enced guides utterly discredit it. It could n't be that 
I was to turn about, and go the way I had come. 
Nevertheless, I said to myself, '' You 'd better keep 
a cool head, my boy, or you are in for a night of 
it. Better listen • to science than to spunk," And I 



18 LOST IN THE WOODS 

resolved to heed the impartial needle. I was a little 
weary of the rough tramping : but it was necessary to 
be moving ; for, with wet clothes and the night air, 
I was decidedly chilly. I turned towards the north, 
and slipped and stumbled along. A more uninviting 
forest to pass the night in I never saw. Everything 
was soaked. If I became exhausted, it would be 
necessary to build a fire ; and, as I walked on, I 
could n't find a dry bit of wood. Even if a little punk 
were discovered in a rotten log, I had no hatchet to 
cut fuel. I thought it all over calmly. I had the 
usual three matches in my pocket. I knew exactly 
what would happen if I tried to build a fire. The 
first match would prove to be wet. The second match, 
when struck, would shine and smell, and fizz a little 
and then go out. There would be only one match 
left. Death would ensue if it failed. I should get 
close to the log, crawl under my hat, strike the match, 
see it catch, flicker, almost go out (the reader pain- 
fully excited by this time), blaze up, nearly expire, 
and finally fire the punk, — thank God ! And I said 
to myseK, " The public don't want any more of this 
thing : it is played out. Either have a box of matches, 
or let the first one catch fire." 

In this gloomy mood I plunged along. The pros- 
pect was cheerless ; for, apart from the comfort that 
a fire would give, it is necessary, at night, to keep off 
the wild beasts. I fancied I could hear the tread of 
the stealthy brutes following their prey. But there 
was one source of profound satisfaction, — the cata- 
mount had been killed. Mr. Colvin, the triangulating 
surveyor of the Adirondacks, killed him in his last 
official report to the State. Whether he despatched 
him with a theodolite or a baromeier does not matter : 



LOST IN THE WOODS 19 

lie is officially dead, and none of the travellers can 
kill him any more. Yet he has served them a good 
turn. 

I knew that catamount well. One night when we 
lay in the bogs of the South Beaver Meadow, under a 
canopy of mosquitoes, the serene midnight was parted 
by a wild and human-like cry from a neighboring 
mountain. " That 's a cat," said the guide. I felt in 
a moment that it was the voice of '' modern cultchah." 
" Modern culture," says Mr. Joseph Cook in a most 
impressive period, — ^' modern culture is a child cry- 
ing in the wilderness, and with no voice but a cry." 
That describes the catamount exactly. The next day, 
when we ascended the mountain, we came upon the 
traces of this brute, — a spot where he had stood and 
cried in the night ; and I confess that my hair rose 
with the consciousness of his recent presence, as it is 
said to do when a spirit passes by. 

Whatever consolation the absence of catamount in 
a dark, drenched, and howling wilderness can impart, 
that I experienced ; but I thought what a satire upon 
my present condition was modern culture, with its 
plain thinking and high living ! It was impossible to 
get much satisfaction out of the real and the ideal, — 
the me and the not-me. At this time what impressed 
me most was the absurdity of my position looked at in 
the light of modern civilization and all my advantages 
and acquirements. It seemed pitiful that society 
could do absolutely nothing for me. It was, in fact, 
humiliating to reflect that it would now be profit- 
able to exchange all my possessions for the woods in- 
stinct of the most unlettered guide. I began to doubt 
the value of the " culture " that blunts the natural 
instincts. 



20 LOST IN THE WOODS 

It began to be a question whether I could hold out 
to walk all night ; for I must travel, or perish. And 
now I imagined that a spectre was walking by my 
side. This was Famine. To be sure, I had only 
recently eaten a hearty luncheon : but the pangs of 
hunger got hold on me when I thought that I should 
have no supper, no breakfast ; and, as the procession 
of unattainable meals stretched before me, I grew 
hungrier and hungrier. I could feel that I was be- 
coming gaunt, and wasting away : already I seemed 
to be emaciated. It is astonishing how speedily a 
jocund, well-conditioned human being can be trans- 
formed into a spectacle of poverty and want. Lose 
a man in the woods, drench him, tear his pantaloons, 
get his imagination running on his lost supper and 
the cheerful fireside that is expecting him, and he will 
become haggard in an hour. I am not dwelling upon 
these things to excite the reader's sympathy, but only 
to advise him, if he contemplates an adventure of this 
kind, to provide himself with matches, kindling-wood, 
something more to eat than one raw trout, and not to 
select a rainy night for it. 

Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a person in 
trouble ! I had read of the soothing companionship 
of the forest, the pleasure of the pathless woods. But 
I thought, as I stumbled along in the dismal actuality, 
that if I ever got out of it I would write a letter to 
the newspapers, exposing the whole thing. There is 
an impassive, stolid brutality about the woods that 
has never been enough insisted on. I tried to keep 
my mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiority to 
Nature ; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My 
situation was an amusing satire on this theory. I 
fancied that I could feel a sneer in the woods at my 



LOST IN THE WOODS 21 

detected conceit. There was something personal in 
it. The downpour of the rain and the slipperiness of 
the ground were elements of discomfort ; but there 
was, besides these, a kind of terror in the very charac- 
ter of the forest itself. I think this arose not more 
from its immensity than from the kind of stolidity to 
which I have alluded. It seemed to me that it would 
be a sort of relief to kick the trees. I don't wonder 
that the bears fall to, occasionally, and scratch the 
bark off the great pines and maples, tearing it angrily 
away. One must have some vent to his feelings. It 
is a common experience of people lost in the woods to 
lose their heads ; and even the woodsmen themselves 
are not free from this panic when some accident has 
thrown them out of their reckoning. Fright unsettles 
the judgment : the oppressive silence of the woods is 
a vacuum in which the mind goes astray. It 's a 
hollow sham, this pantheism, I said ; being '' one with 
Nature " is all humbug : I should like to see some- 
body. Man, to be sure, is of very little account, and 
soon gets beyond his depth ; but the society of the 
least human being is better than this gigantic indiffer- 
ence. The " rapture on the lonely shore " is agree- 
able only when you know you can at any moment go 
home. 

I had now given up all expectation of finding the 
road, and was steering my way as well as I could 
northward towards the valley. In my haste I made 
slow progress. Probably the distance I travelled was 
short, and the time consumed not long ; but I seemed 
to be adding mile to mile, and hour to hour. I had 
time to review the incidents of the Russo-Turkish 
war, and to forecast the entire Eastern question ; I 
outlined the characters of all my companions left in 



22 LOST IN THE WOODS 

camp, and sketched in a sort of comedy the sym- 
pathetic and disparaging observations they would 
make on my adventure ; I repeated something like a 
thousand times, without contradiction, " What a fool 
you were to leave the river ! " I stopped twenty times, 
thinking I heard its loud roar, always deceived by the 
wind in the tree tops ; I began to entertain serious 
doubts about the compass, — when suddenly I became 
aware that I was no longer on level ground ; I was 
descending a slope ; I was actually in a ravine. In a 
moment more I was in a brook newly formed by the 
rain. " Thank Heaven ! " I cried : " this I shall follow 
whatever conscience or the compass says." In this 
region, all streams go, sooner or later, into the val- 
ley. This ravine, this stream, no doubt, led to the 
river. I splashed and tumbled along down it in 
mud and water. Down hill we went together, the fall 
showing that I must have wandered to high ground. 
When I guessed that I must be close to the river, I 
suddenly stepped into mud up to my ankles. It was 
the road, — running, of course, the wrong way, but 
still the blessed road. It was a mere canal of liquid 
mud ; but man had made it, and it would take me 
home. I was at least three miles from the point 
where I supposed I was near at sunset, and I had be- 
fore me a toilsome walk of six or seven miles, most of 
the way in a ditch ; but it is truth to say I enjoyed 
every step of it. I was safe ; I knew where I was ; 
and I could have walked till morning. The mind 
had again got the upper hand of the body, and began 
to plume itself on its superiority : it was even disposed 
to doubt whether it had been " lost " at all. 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 



Tkout-fishing in the Adirondacks would be a more 
attractive pastime than it is, but for the popular notion 
of its danger. The trout is a retiring and harmless ani- 
mal, except when he is aroused, and forced into a com- 
bat ; and then his agility, fierceness, and vindictiveness 
become apparent. No one who has studied the excel- 
lent pictures representing men in an open boat, exposed 
to the assaults of long, enraged trout flying at them 
through the open air with open mouth, ever ventures 
with his rod upon the lonely lakes of the forest without 
a certain terror, or ever reads of the exploits of daring 
fishermen without a feeling of admiration for their 
heroism. Most of their adventures are thrilling, and 
all of them are, in narration, more or less unjust to 
the trout : in fact, the object of them seems to be to 
exhibit, at the expense of the trout, the shrewdness, the 
skill, and the muscular power of the sportsman. My 
own simple story has few of these recommendations. 

We had built our bark camp one summer, and were 
staying on one of the popular lakes of the Saranac re- 
gion. It would be a very pretty region if it were not 
so flat, if the margins of the lakes had not been flooded 
by dams at the outlets, — which have killed the trees, 
and left a rim of ghastly dead-wood like the swamps of 
the under- world pictured by Dore's bizarre pencil, — 
and if the pianos at the hotels were in tune. It would 



24 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 

be an excellent sporting-region also (for there is water 
enough) if the fish commissioners would stock the 
waters, and if previous hunters had not pulled all the 
hair and skin off from the deer's tails. Formerly sports- 
men had a habit of catching the deer by the tails, and 
of being dragged in mere wantonness round and round 
the shores. It is well known, that, if you seize a deer 
by this '' holt," the skin will slip off like the peel from 
a banana. This reprehensible practice was carried so 
far, that the traveller is now hourly pained by the sight 
of peeled-tail deer mournfully sneaking about the wood. 

We had been hearing, for weeks, of a small lake 
in the heart of the virgin forest, some ten miles from 
our camp, which was alive with trout, unsophisticated, 
hungry trout : the inlet to it was described as stiff "with 
them. In my imagination I saw them lying there in 
ranks and rows, each a foot long, three tiers deep, a 
solid mass. The lake had never been visited, except 
by stray sable-hunters in the winter, and was known 
as the Unknown Pond. I determined to explore it ; 
fully expecting, however, that it would prove to be a 
delusion, as such mysterious haunts of the trout usually 
are. Confiding my purpose to Luke, we secretly made 
our preparations, and stole away from the shanty one 
morning at daybreak. Each of us carried a boat, a pair 
of blankets, a sack of bread, pork, and maple-sugar ; 
while I had my case of rods, creel, and book of flies, 
and Luke had an axe and the kitchen utensils. We 
think nothing of loads of this sort in the woods. 

Five miles through a tamarack-swamp brought us to 
the inlet of Unknown Pond, upon which we embarked 
our fleet, and paddled down its vagrant waters. They 
were at first sluggish, winding among triste fir-trees, 
but gradually developed a strong current. At the end 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 25 

of three miles a loud roar ahead warned us that we were 
approaching rapids, falls, and cascades. We paused. 
The danger was unknown. We had our choice of 
shouldering our loads and making a detour through 
the woods, or of '' shooting the rapids." Naturally we 
chose the more dangerous course. Shooting the rapids 
has often been described, and I will not repeat the 
description here. It is needless to say that I drove 
my frail bark through the boiling rapids, over the suc- 
cessive water-falls, amid rocks and vicious eddies, and 
landed half a mile below with whitened hair and a 
boat half full of water ; and that the guide was upset, 
and boat, contents, and man were strewn along the 
shore. 

After this common experience we went quickly on 
our journey, and, a couple of hours before sundown, 
reached the lake. If I live to my dying day, I never 
shall forget its appearance. The lake is almost an 
exact circle, about a quarter of a mile in diameter. 
The forest about it was untouched by axe, and unkilled 
by artificial flooding. The azure water had a perfect 
setting of evergreens, in which all the shades of the 
fir, the balsam, the pine, and the spruce, were perfectly 
blended ; and at intervals on the shore, in the emerald 
rim, blazed the ruby of the cardinal-flower. It was at 
once evident that the unruffled waters had never been 
vexed by the keel of a boat. But what chiefly attracted 
my attention, and amused me, was the boiling of the 
water, the bubbling and breaking, as if the lake were 
a vast kettle, with a fire underneath. A tyro would 
have been astonished at this common phenomenon ; 
but sportsmen will at once understand me when I say 
that the water boiled with the breaking trout. I studied 
the surface for some time to see upon what sort of 



26 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 

flies they were feeding, in order to suit my cast to 
their appetites ; but they seemed to be at play rather 
than feeding, leaping high in the air in graceful curves, 
and tumbling about each other as we see them in the 
Adirondack pictures. 

It is well known that no person who regards his 
reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a 
fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout 
to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisti- 
cated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait ; 
and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fish- 
ing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their 
primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman, however, 
will use anything but a fly, except he happens to be 
alone. 

While Luke launched my boat, and arranged his 
seat in the stern, I prepared my rod and line. The 
rod is a bamboo, weighing seven ounces, which has to 
be spliced with a winding of silk thread every time it 
is used. This is a tedious process ; but, by fastening 
the joints in this way, a uniform spring is secured in 
the rod. No one devoted to high art would think of 
using a socket joint. My line was forty yards of un- 
twisted silk upon a multiplying reel. The " leader " — 
X am very particular about my leaders — had been made 
to order from a domestic animal with which I had been 
acquainted. The fisherman requires as good a catgut 
as the violinist. The interior of the house-cat, it is 
well known, is exceedingly sensitive ; but it may not be 
so well known that the reason why some cats leave the 
room in distress when a piano-forte is played is because 
the two instruments are not in the same key, and the 
vibrations of the chords of the one are in discord with 
the catgut of the other. On six feet of this superior 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 27 

article I fixed three artificial flies, — a simple brown 
hackle, a gray body with scarlet wings, and one of my 
own invention, which I thought would be new to the 
most experienced fly-catcher. The trout-fly does not 
resemble any known species of insect. It is a " conven- 
tionalized " creation, as we say of ornamentation. The 
theory is, that, fly-fishing being a high art, the fly must 
not be a tame imitation of nature, but an artistic sug- 
gestion of it. It requires an artist to construct one ; 
and not every bungler can take a bit of red flannel, a 
peacock's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a cock's 
plume, a section of a hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny 
object that will not look like any fly, but still will sug- 
gest the universal conventional fly. 

I took my stand in the centre of the tipsy boat ; and 
Luke shoved off, and slowly paddled towards some 
lily-pads, while I began casting, unlimbering my tools, 
as it were. The fish had all disappeared. I got out, 
perhaps, fifty feet of line, with no response, and grad- 
ually increased it to one hundred. It is not difficult 
to learn to cast ; but it is difficult to learn not to snap 
off the flies at every throw. Of this, however, we will 
not speak. I continued casting for some moments, un- 
til I became satisfied that there had been a miscalcu- 
lation. Either the trout were too green to know what 
I was at, or they were dissatisfied with my offers. I 
reeled in, and changed the flies (that is, the fly that 
was not snapped off). After studying the color of the 
sky, of the water, and of the foliage, and the moderated 
light of the afternoon, I put on a series of beguilers, 
all of a subdued brilliancy, in harmony with the ap- 
proach of evening. At the second cast, which was a 
short one, I saw a splash where the leader fell, and 
gave an excited jerk. The next instant I perceived 



28 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT ^ 

the game, and did not need the unfeigned " dam " of 
Luke to convince me that I had snatched his felt hat 
from his head, and deposited it among the lilies. Dis- 
couraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled over 
to the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the 
tinted light. At the very first cast I saw that the hour 
had come. Three trout leaped into the air. The 
danger of this manoeuvre all fishermen understand. It 
is one of the commonest in the woods : three heavy 
trout taking hold at once, rushing in different direc- 
tions, smash the tackle into flinders. I evaded this 
catch, and threw again. I recall the moment. A her- 
mit thrush, on the tip of a balsam, uttered his long, 
liquid evening note. Happening to look over my 
shoulder, I saw the peak of Marcy gleam rosy in the 
sky (I can't help it that Marcy is fifty miles off, and 
cannot be seen from this region : these incidental 
touches are always used). The hundred feet of silk 
swished through the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly 
on the water as a three-cent piece, which no slamming 
will give the weight of a ten, drops upon the contri- 
bution plate. Instantly there was a rush, a swirl. I 
struck, and " Got him, by — ! " Never mind what 
Luke said I got him by. " Out on a fly ! " continued 
that irreverent guide ; but I told him to back water, 
and make for the centre of the lake. The trout, as 
soon as he felt the prick of the hook, was off like a 
shot, and took out the whole of the line with a rapid- 
ity that made it smoke. " Give him the butt ! '' 
shouted Luke. It is the usual remark in such an 
emergency. I gave him the butt ; and, recognizing the 
fact and my spirit, the trout at once sank to the bot- 
tom, and sulked. It is the most dangerous mood of a 
trout ; for you cannot tell what he will do next. We 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 29 

reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for him to 
reflect. A tightening of the line enraged him, and 
he soon developed his tactics. Coming to the surface, 
he made straight for the boat faster than I could reel 
in, and evidently with hostile intentions. " Look out 
for him ! " cried Luke as he came flying in the air. 
I evaded him by dropping flat in the bottom of the 
boat ; and, when I picked my traps up, he was spin- 
ning across the lake as if he had a new idea ; but the 
line was still fast. He did not run far. I gave him 
the butt again ; a thing he seemed to hate, even as a 
gift. In a moment the evil-minded fish, lashing the 
water in his rage, was coming back again, making 
straight for the boat as before. Luke, who was used 
to these encounters, having read of them in the writ- 
ings of travellers he had accompanied, raised his pad- 
dle in self-defence. The trout left the water about ten 
feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery 
eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I 
dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his 
bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line 
was of course slack ; and the danger was that he would 
entangle it about me, and carry away a leg. This 
was evidently his game ; but I untangled it, and only 
lost a breast-button or two by the swiftly-moving string. 
The trout plunged into the water with a hissing sound, 
and went away again with all the line on the reel. 
More butt ; more indignation on the part of the cap- 
tive. The contest had now been going on for half an 
hour, and I was getting exhausted. We had been back 
and forth across the lake, and round and round the 
lake. What I feared was, that the trout would start 
up the inlet, and wreck us in the bushes. But he had 
a new fancy, and began the execution of a manoeuvre 



30 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 

which I had never read of. Instead of coming straight 
towards me, he took a large circle, swimming rapidly, 
and gradually contracting his orhit» I reeled in, and 
kept my eye on him. Round and round he went, nar- 
rowing his circle. I began to suspect the game ; 
which was, to twist my head off. When he had re- 
duced the radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, 
he struck a tremendous pace through the water. It 
would be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I 
was not equal to the occasion. Instead of turning 
round vdth him, as he expected, I stepped to the bow, 
braced myself, and let the boat swing. Eound went 
the fish, and round we went like a top. I saw a line 
of Mount Marcys all round the horizon ; the rosy tint 
in the west made a broad band of pink along the sky 
above the tree-tops ; the evening star was a perfect 
circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. We 
whirled and reeled, and reeled and whirled. I was 
willing to give the malicious beast butt and line, and 
all, if he would only go the other way for a change. 

When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout 
at the boat-side. After we had got him in and dressed 
him, he weighed three-quarters of a pound. Fish 
always lose by being " got in and dressed." It is best 
to weigh them while they are in the water. The only 
really large one I ever caught got away with my 
leader when I first struck him. He weighed ten pounds. 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 



If civilization owes a debt of gratitude to the self- 
sacrificing sportsmen who have cleared the Adiron- 
dack regions of catamounts and savage trout, what 
shall be said of the army which has so nobly relieved 
them of the terror of the deer ? The deer-slayers have 
somewhat celebrated their exploits in print ; but I 
think that justice has never been done them. 

The American deer in the wilderness, left to him- 
self, leads a comparatively harmless but rather stupid 
life, with only such excitement as his own timid 
fancy raises. It was very seldom that one of his tribe 
was eaten by the North American tiger. For a wild 
animal he is very domestic, simple in his tastes, reg- 
ular in his habits, affectionate in his family. Unfor- 
tunately for his^ repose, his haunch is as tender as 
his heart. Of all wild creatures he is one of the 
most graceful in action, and he poses with the skill 
of an experienced model. I have seen the goats on 
Mount Pentelicus scatter at the approach of a stran- 
ger, climb to the sharp points of projecting rocks, and 
attitudinize in the most self-conscious manner, strik- 
ing at once those picturesque postures against the sky 
with which Oriental pictures have made us and them 
familiar. But the whole proceeding was theatrical. 
Greece is the home of art, and it is rare to find any- 
thing there natural and unstudied. I presume that 



32 A'-HUNTING OF THE DEER 

these goats have no nonsense about them when they 
are alone with the goat-herds, any more than the goat- 
herds have, except when they come to pose in the stu- 
dio ; but the long ages of culture, the presence always 
to the eye o£ the best models and the forms of im- 
mortal beauty, the heroic friezes of the Temple of 
Theseus, the marble processions of sacrificial animals, 
have had a steady moulding, educating influence 
equal to a society of decorative art upon the people 
and the animals who have dwelt in this artistic atmos- 
phere. The Attic goat has become an artificially ar- 
tistic being ; though of course he is not now what he 
was, as a poser, in the days of Polycletus. There is 
opportunity for a very instructive essay by Mr. E. A. 
Freeman on the decadence of the Attic goat imder 
the influence of the Ottoman Turk. 

The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our 
country, and as yet untouched by our decorative art, 
is without self-consciousness, and all his attitudes are 
free and unstudied. The favorite position cl the 
deer — his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, 
among the lily-pads, his antlers thrown back an "* his 
nose in the air at the moment he hears the stealthy 
breaking of a twig in the forest — is still spirited and 
graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures of him 
which the artists have put upon canvas. 

Wherever you go in the Northern forest, you will 
find deer-paths. So plainly marked and well-trodden 
are they, that it is easy to mistake them for trails 
made by hunters ; but he who follows one of them is 
soon in difficulties. He may find himself climbing 
through cedar-thickets an almost inaccessible cliff, or 
immersed in the intricacies of a marsh. The " run," 
in one direction, will lead to water ; but, in the other, 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 33 

it climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires, 
for safety and repose, in impenetrable thickets. The 
hunters, in winter, find them congregated in '' yards," 
where they can be surrounded and shot as easily as 
our troops shoot Comanche women and children in 
their winter villages. These little paths are full of 
pitfalls among the roots and stones ; and, nimble as 
the deer is, he sometimes breaks one of his slender 
legs in them. Yet he knows how to treat himself 
without a surgeon. I knew of a tame deer in a settle- 
ment in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune 
to break her leg. She immediately disappeared with 
a delicacy rare in an invalid, and was not seen for two 
weeks. Her friends had given her up, supposing that 
she had dragged herself away into the depths of the 
woods, and died of starvation ; when one day she re- 
turned, cured of lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow. 
She had the sense to shun the doctor ; to lie down 
in some safe place, and patiently wait for her leg 
to heal. I have observed in many of the more re- 
fined animals this sort of shyness and reluctance to 
give trouble which excite our admiration when noticed 
in mankind. 

The deer is called a timid animal, and taunted with 
possessing courage only when he is " at bay ; " the 
stag will fight when he can no longer flee ; and the 
doe will defend her young in the face of murderous 
enemies. The deer gets little credit for this eleventh- 
hour bravery. But I think that in any truly Chris- 
tian condition of society the deer would not be con- 
spicuous for cowardice. I suppose that if the Amer- 
ican girl, even as she is described in foreign romances, 
were pursued by bull-dogs, and fired at from behind 
fences every time she ventured out-doors, she would 



34 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 

become timid, and reluctant to go abroad. When 
that golden era comes which the poets think is behind 
us, and the prophets declare is about to be ushered in 
by the opening of the '' vials," and the killing of every- 
body who does not believe as those nations believe 
which have the most cannon ; when we all live in real 
concord, — perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will be re- 
spected, and will find that men are not more savage to 
the weak than are the cougars and panthers. If the 
little spotted fawn can think, it must seem to her a 
queer world in which the advent of innocence is hailed 
by the baying of fierce hounds and the "ping " of the 
rifle. 

Hunting the deer in the Adirondacks is conducted 
in the most manly fashion. There are several meth- 
ods, and in none of them is a fair chance to the deer 
considered. A favorite method with the natives is 
practised in winter, and is called by them " still hunt- 
ing." My idea of still hunting is for one man to go 
alone into the forest, look about for a deer, put his 
wits fairly against the wits of the keen-scented animal, 
and kill his deer, or get lost in the attempt. There 
seems to be a sort of fairness about this. It is private 
assassination, tempered with a little uncertainty about 
finding your man. The still hunting of the natives 
has all the romance and danger attending the slaugh- 
ter of sheep in an abattoir. As the snow gets deep, 
many deer congregate in the depths of the forest, and 
keep a place trodden down, which grows larger as 
they tramp down the snow in search of food. In time 
this refuge becomes a sort of " yard," surrounded by 
unbroken snow-banks. The hunters then make their 
way to this retreat on snow-shoes, and from the top of 
the banks pick off the deer at leisure with their rifles, 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 35 

and haul them away to market, until the enclosure is 
pretty much emptied. This is one of the surest meth- 
ods of exterminating the deer ; it is also one of the 
most merciful; and, being the plan adopted by our 
government for civilizing the Indian, it ought to be 
popular. The only people who object to it are the 
summer sportsmen. They naturally want some pleas- 
ure out of the death of the deer. 

Some of our best sportsmen, who desire to protract 
the pleasure of- slaying deer through as many seasons 
as possible, object to the practice of the hunters, who 
make it their chief business to slaughter as many deer 
in a camping-season as they can. Their own rule, 
they say, is to kill a deer only when they need venison 
to eat. Their excuse is specious. What right have 
these sophists to put themselves into a desert place, 
out of the reach of provisions, and then ground a 
right to slay deer on their own improvidence ? If it 
is necessary for these people to have anything to eat, 
which I doubt, it is not necessary that they should 
have the luxury of venison. 

One of the most picturesque methods of hunting 
the poor deer is called '' floating." The person, with 
murder in his heart, chooses a cloudy night, seats him- 
self, rifle in hand, in a canoe, which is noiselessly pad- 
dled by the guide, and explores the shore of the lake 
or the dark inlet. In the bow of the boat is a light 
in a "jack," the rays of which are shielded from the 
boat and its occupants. A deer comes down to feed 
upon the lily-pads. The boat approaches him. He 
looks up, and stands a moment, terrified or fascinated 
by the bright flames. In that moment the sportsman 
is supposed to shoot the deer. As an historical fact, 
his hand usually shakes, so that he misses the animal, 



36 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 

or only wounds him ; and the stag limps away to die 
after days of suffering. Usually, however, the hunt- 
ers remain out all night, get stiff from cold and the 
cramped position in the boat, and, when they return 
in the morning to camp, cloud their future existence 
by the assertion that they '' heard a big buck " mov- 
ing along the shore, but the people in camp made so 
much noise that he was frightened off. 

By all odds, the favorite and prevalent mode is 
hunting with dogs. The dogs do the hunting, the 
men the killing. The hounds are sent into the forest 
to rouse the deer, and drive him from his cover. 
They climb the mountains, strike the trails, and go 
baying and yelping on the track of the poor beast. 
The deer have their established run-ways, as I said ; 
and, when they are disturbed in their retreat, they 
are certain to attempt to escape by following one 
which invariably leads to some lake or stream. All 
that the hunter has to do is to seat himself by one of 
these run-ways, or sit in a boat on the lake, and wait 
the coming of the pursued deer. The frightened 
beast, fleeing from the unreasoning brutality of the 
hounds, will often seek the open country, with a mis- 
taken confidence in the humanity of man. To kill a 
deer when he suddenly passes one on a run-way de- 
mands presence of mind, and quickness of aim : to 
shoot him from the boat, after he has plunged panting 
into the lake, requires the rare ability to hit a moving 
object the size of a deer's head a few rods distant. 
Either exploit is sufficient to make a hero of a com- 
mon man. To paddle up to the swimming deer, and 
cut his throat, is a sure means of getting venison, and 
has its charms for some. Even women, and doctors 
of divinity, have enjoyed this exquisite pleasure. It 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 37 

cannot be denied that we are so constituted by a wise 
Creator as to feel a delight in killing a wild animal 
which we do not experience in killing a tame one. 

The pleasurable excitement of a deer-hunt has 
never, I believe, been regarded from the deer's point 
of view. I happen to be in a position by reason of 
a lucky Adirondack experience, to present it in that 
light. I am sorry if this introduction to my little 
story has seemed long to the reader: it is too late 
now to skip it ; but he can recoup himself by omitting 
the story. 

Early on the morning of the 23d of August, 1877, 
a doe was feeding on Basin Mountain. The night 
had been warm and showery, and the morning opened 
in an undecided way. The wind was southerly : it is 
what the deer call a dog-wind, having come to know 
quite well the meaning of " a southerly wind and a 
cloudy sky." The sole companion of the doe was her 
only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown coat 
was just beginning to be mottled with the beautiful 
spots which make this young creature as lovely as the 
gazelle. The buck, its father, had been that night on 
a long tramp across the mountain to Clear Pond, and 
had not yet returned : he went ostensibly to feed on 
the succulent lily-pads there. " He feedeth among the 
lilies until the day break and the shadows flee away, 
and he should be here by this hour ; but he cometh 
not," she said, '' leaping upon the mountains, skipping 
upon the hills." Clear Pond was too far off for the 
young mother to go with her fawn for a night's pleas- 
ure. It was a fashionable watering-place at this sea- 
son among the deer ; and the doe may have remem- 
bered, not without uneasiness, the moonlight meetings 
of a frivolous society there. But the buck did not 



38 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 

come : he was very likely sleeping under one of the 
ledges on Tight Nippin. Was he alone ? ''I charge 
you, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that 
ye stir not nor awake my love till he please." 

The doe was feeding, daintily cropping the tender 
leaves of the young shoots, and turning from time to 
time to regard her offspring. The fawn had taken his 
morning meal, and now lay curled up on a bed of 
moss, watching contentedly, with his large, soft brown 
eyes, every movement of his mother. The great eyes 
followed her with an alert entreaty; and, if the 
mother stepped a pace or two farther away in feed- 
ing, the fawn made a half -movement, as if to rise and 
follow her. You see, she was his sole dependence in 
all the world. But he was quickly* reassured when 
she turned her gaze on him ; and if, in alarm, he ut- 
tered a plaintive cry, she bounded to him at once, 
and, with every demonstration of affection, licked his 
mottled skin till it shone again. 

It was a pretty picture, — maternal love on the one 
part, and happy trust on the other. The doe was 
a beauty, and would have been so considered any- 
where, as graceful and winning a creature as the sun 
that day shone on, — slender limbs, not too heavy 
flanks, round body, and aristocratic head, with small 
ears, and luminous, intelligent, affectionate eyes. 
How alert, supple, free, she was ! What untaught 
grace in every movement ! What a charming pose 
when she lifted her head, and turned it to regard her 
child ! You would have had a companion-picture, if 
you had seen, as I saw that morning, a baby kicking 
about among the dry pine-needles on a ledge above 
the Ausable, in the valley below, while its young 
mother sat near, with an easel before her touching in 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 39 

the color of a reluctant landscape, giving a quick look 
at the sky and the outline of the Twin Mountains, 
and bestowing every third glance upon the laughing 
boy, — art in its infancy. 

The doe lifted her head a little with a quick motion, 
and turned her ear to the south. Had she heard 
something ? Probably it was only the south winds in 
the balsams. There was silence all about in the for- 
est. If the doe had heard anything it was one of the 
distant noises of the world. There are in the woods 
occasional meanings, premonitions of change, which 
are inaudible to the dull ears of men, but which, I 
have no doubt, the forest-folk hear and understand. 
If the doe's suspicions were excited for an instant, 
they were gone as soon. With an affectionate glance 
at her fawn, she continued picking up her breakfast. 

But suddenly she started, head erect, eyes dilated, 
a tremor in her limbs. She took a step ; she turned 
her head to the south ; she listened intently. There 
was a sound, — a distant, prolonged note, bell-toned, 
pervading the woods, shaking the air in smooth vibra- 
tions. It was repeated. The doe had no doubt noWo 
She shook like the sensitive mimosa when a footstep 
approaches. It was the baying of a hound ! It was 
far off, — at the foot of the mountain. Time enough 
to fly ; time enough to put miles between her and the 
hound, before he should come upon her fresh trail ; 
time enough to escape away through the dense forest, 
and hide in the recesses of Panther Gorge ; yes, time 
enough. But there was the fawn. The cry of the 
hound was repeated, more distinct this time. The 
mother instinctively bounded away a few paces. The 
fawn started up with an anxious bleat. The doe 
turned ; she came back ; she could n't leave it. She 



40 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 

bent over it, and licked it, and seemed to say, " Come, 
my child; we are pursued; we must go." She 
walked away towards the west, and the little thing 
skipped after her. It was slow going for the slender 
legs, over the fallen logs, and through the rasping 
bushes. The doe bounded in advance, and waited ; 
the fawn scrambled after her, slipping and tumbling 
along, very groggy yet on its legs, and whining a 
good deal because its mother kept always moving 
away from it. The fawn evidently did not hear the 
hound ; the little innocent would even have looked 
sweetly at the dog, and tried to make friends with it, 
if the brute had been rushing upon him. By all the 
means at her command the doe urged her young one 
on ; but it was slow work. She might have been a 
mile away while they were making a few rods. 
Whenever the fawn caught up he was quite content 
to frisk about. He wanted more breakfast, for one 
thing ; and his mother would n't stand still. She 
moved on continually ; and his weak legs were tangled 
in the roots of the narrow deer-path. 

Shortly came a sound that threw the doe into a 
panic of terror, — a short, sharp yelp, followed by a 
prolonged howl, caught up and re-echoed by other 
hayings along the mountain-side. The doe knew 
what that meant. One hound had caught her trail, 
and the whole pack responded to the " view-halloo." 
The danger was certain now ; it was near. She 
could not crawl on in this way ; the dogs would soon 
be upon them. She turned again for flight : the fawn, 
scrambling after her, tumbled over, and bleated pite- 
ously. The baying, now emphasized by the yelp of 
certainty, came nearer. Flight with the fawn was 
impossible. The doe returned and stood by it, head 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 41 

erect, and nostrils distended. She stood perfectly 
still, but trembling. Perhaps she was thinking. The 
fawn took advantage of the situation, and began to 
draw his luncheon ration. The doe seemed to have 
made up her mind. She let him finish. The fawn^ 
having taken all he wanted, lay down contentedly, 
and the doe licked him for a moment. Then, with 
the swiftness of a bird, she dashed away, and in 
8 moment was lost in the forest. She went in the 
direction of the hounds. 

According to all human calculations, she was going 
into the jaws of death. So she was : all human calcu- 
lations are selfish. She kept straight on, hearing the 
baying every moment more distinctly. She descended 
the slope of the mountain until she reached the more 
open forest of hard-wood. It was freer going here, 
and the cry of the pack echoed more resoundingly 
in the great spaces. She was going due east, when 
(judging by the sound, the hounds were not far off, 
though they were still hidden by a ridge) she turned 
away towards the north, and kept on at a good pace. 
In five minutes more she heard the sharp, exultant 
yelp of discovery, and then the deep-mouthed howl of 
pursuit. The hounds had struck her trail where she 
turned, and the fawn was safe. 

The doe was in good running condition, the ground 
was not bad, and she felt the exhilaration of the 
chase. For the moment, fear left her, and she bounded 
on with the exaltation of triumph. For a quarter of 
an hour she went on at a slapping pace, clearing the 
moose-bushes with bound after bound, flying over the 
fallen logs, pausing neither for brook or ravine. The 
baying of the bounds grew fainter behind her. But 
she struck a bad piece of going, a dead-wood slash. 



42 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 

It was marvellous to see her skim over it, leaping 
among its intricacies, and not breaking her slender 
legs. No other living animal could do it. .But it 
was killing work. She began to pant fearfully ; she 
lost ground. The baying of the hounds was nearer. 
She climbed the hard- wood hill at a slower gait : but, 
once on more level, free ground, her breath came back 
to her, and she stretched away with new courage, and 
may be a sort of contempt of her heavy pursuers. 

After running at a high speed perhaps half a mile 
farther, it occurred to her that it would be safe now 
to turn to the west, and, by a wide circuit, seek her 
fawn. But, at the moment, she heard a sound that 
chilled her heart. It was the cry of a hound to 
the west of her. The crafty brute had made the cir- 
cuit of the slash, and cut off her retreat. There was 
nothing to do but to keep on ; and on she went, still 
to the north, with the noise of the pack behind her. 
In five minutes more she had passed into a hill- 
side clearing. Cows and young steers were grazing 
there. She heard a tinkle of bells. Below her, down 
the mountain-slope, were other clearings, broken by 
patches of woods. Fences intervened ; and a mile 
or two down lay the valley, the shining Ausable, and 
the peaceful farm-houses. That way also her hered- 
itary enemies were. Not a merciful heart in all that 
lovely valley. She hesitated ; it was only for an in- 
stant. She must cross the Slidebrook Valley if possi- 
ble, and gain the mountain opposite. She bounded 
on ; she stopped. What was that ? From the valley 
ahead came the cry of a searching hound. All the 
devils were loose this morning. Every way was 
closed but one, and that led straight down the moun- 
tain to the cluster of houses. Conspicuous among 



A- HUN TING OF THE DEER 43 

them was a slender white wooden spire. The doe did 
not know it was the spire of a Christian chapel, but 
perhaps she thought that human pity dwelt there, and 
would be more merciful than the teeth of the hounds* 

** The hounds are baying on my track : 
O white man ! will you send me back ? " 

In a panic, frightened animals will always flee to 
human-kind from the danger of more savage foes. 
They always make a mistake in doing so. Perhaps 
the. trait is the survival of an era of peace on earth ; 
perhaps it is a prophecy of the golden age of the 
future. The business of this age is murder, — the 
slaughter of animals, the slaughter of fellow-men, by 
the wholesale. Hilarious poets who never fired a gun 
write hunting songs, — Ti-ra-la : and good bishops 
write war-songs, — Ave the Czar ! 

The hunted doe went down " the open," clearing 
the fences splendidly, flying along the stony path. It 
was a beautiful sight. But consider what a shot 
it was! If the deer, now, could only have been 
caught ! No doubt there were tender-hearted people 
in the valley who would have spared her life, shut her 
up in a stable, and petted her. Was there one who 
would have let her go back to her waiting fawn ? It 
is the business of civilization to tame or kill. 

The doe went on ; she left the saw-mill on John's 
Brook to her right ; she turned into a wood-path. As 
she approached Slide Brook, she saw a boy standing 
by a tree with a raised rifle. The dogs were not in 
sight, but she could hear them coming down the hill. 
There was no time for hesitation. With a tremendous 
burst of speed she cleared the stream, and, as she 
touched the bank, heard the " ping " of a rifle bullet 
in the air above her. The cruel sound gave wings to 



44 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 

the poor thing. In a moment more she was in the 
opening : she leaped into the travelled road. Which 
way ? Below her in the wood was a load of hay : a 
man and a boy, with pitchforks in their hands, were 
running towards her. She turned south, and flew 
along the street. The town was up. Women and 
children ran to the doors and windows ; men snatched 
their rifles ; shots were fired ; at the big boarding- 
houses, the summer boarders, who never have any- 
thing to do, came out and cheered ; a camp-stool was 
thrown from a veranda. Some young fellows shoot- 
ing at a mark in the meadow saw the flying deer, and 
popped away at her : but they were accustomed to a 
mark that stood still. It was all so sudden ! There 
were twenty people who were just going to shoot her ; 
when the doe leaped the road fence, and went away 
across a marsh towards the foot-hills. It was a fear- 
ful gauntlet to run. But nobody except the deer con- 
sidered it in that light. Everybody told what he was 
just going to do! everybody who had seen the per- 
formance was a kind of hero, — everybody except the 
deer. For days and days it was the subject of con- 
versation ; and the summer boarders kept their guns 
at hand, expecting another deer would come to be 
shot at. 

The doe went away to the foot-hills, going now 
flower, and evidently fatigued, if not frightened half 
to death. Nothing is so appalling to a recluse as a 
half a mile of summer boarders. As the deer entered 
the thin woods she saw a rabble of people start across 
the meadow in pursuit. By this time, the dogs, pant- 
ing and lolling out their tongues, came swinging along, 
keeping the trail, like stupids, and consequently los- 
ing ground when the deer doubled. But, when the 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 45 

doe had got into the timber, she heard the savage 
brutes howling across the meadow. (It is well 
enough, perhaps, to say that nobody offered to shoot 
the dogs.) 

The courage of the panting fugitive was not gone : 
she was game to the tip of her high-bred ears. But 
the fearful pace at which she had just been going told 
on her. Her legs trembled, and her heart beat like a 
trip-hammer. She slowed her speed perforce, but still 
fled industriously up the right bank of the stream. 
When she had gone a couple of miles, and the dogs 
were evidently gaining again, she crossed the broad, 
deep brook, climbed the steep, left bank, and fled on 
in the direction of the Mount Marcy trail. The ford- 
ing of the river threw the hounds off for a time. She 
knew, by their uncertain yelping up and down the op- 
posite bank, that she had a little respite : she used it, 
however, to push on until the baying was faint in her 
ears ; and then she dropped, exhausted, upon the 
ground. 

This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. Roused 
again by the baying pack, she leaped forward with 
better speed, though without that keen feeling of ex- 
hilarating flight that she had in the morning. It was 
still a race for life ; but the odds were in her favor, 
she thought. She did not appreciate the dogged 
persistence of the hounds, nor had any inspiration 
told her that the race is not to the swift. She was a 
little confused in her mind where to go ; but an in- 
stinct kept her course to the left, and consequently far- 
ther away from her fawn. Going now slower, and now 
faster, as the pursuit seemed more distant or nearer, 
she kept to the south-west, crossed the stream again, 
left Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by Hay- 



46 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 

stack and Skylight in the direction of the Upper 
Ausable Pond. I do not know her exact course 
through this maze of mountains, swamps, ravines, and 
frightful wildernesses. I only know that the poor 
thing woi^ked her way along painfully, with sinking 
heart and unsteady limbs, lying down " dead-beat " at 
intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of the re- 
morseless dogs, until, late in the afternoon she stag- 
gered down the shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon 
the shore of the lake. If she could put that piece of 
water between her and her pursuers, she would be 
safe. Had she strength to swim it ? 

At her first step into the water she saw a sight that 
send her back with a bound. There was a boat mid- 
lake ; two men were in it. One was rowing : the other 
had a gun in his hand. They were looking towards 
her : they had seen her. (She did not know that they 
had heard the baying of hounds on the mountains, 
and had been lying in wait for her an hour.) What 
should she do ? The hounds were drawing near. 
No escape that way, even if she could still run. 
With only a moment's hesitation she plunged into the 
lake, and struck obliquely across. Her tired legs 
could not propel the tired body rapidly. She saw the 
boat headed for her. She turned towards the centre 
of the lake. The boat turned. She could hear the 
rattle of the oar-locks. It was gaining on her. Then 
there was a silence. Then there was a splash of the 
water just ahead of her, followed by a roar round the 
lake, the words " Confound it all ! " and a rattle of 
the oars again. The doe saw the boat nearing her. 
She turned irresolutely to the shore whence she came: 
the dogs were lapping the water, and howling there. 
She turned again to the centre of the lake. 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER ^ 47 

The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted now. 
In a moment more, with a rush of water, the boat was 
on her, and the man at the oars had leaned over and 
caught her by the tail. 

'^ Knock her on the head with that paddle!" he 
shouted to the gentleman in the stern. 

The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, 
smooth-shaven face, and might have been a minister 
of some sort of everlasting gospel. He took the pad- 
dle in his hand. Just then the doe turned her head, 
and looked at him with her great, appealing eyes. 

" I can't do it ! my soul, I can't do it ! " and he 
dropped the paddle. '' Oh, let her go ! " 

" Let thunder go ! " was the only response of the 
guide as he slung the deer round, whipped out his 
hunting-knife, and made a pass that severed her jug- 
ular. 

And the gentleman ate that night of the venison. 

The buck returned about the middle of the after- 
noon. The fawn was bleating piteously, hungry and 
lonesome. The buck was surprised. He looked about 
in the forest. He took a circuit and came back. His 
doe was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at the 
fawn in a helpless sort of way. The fawn appealed 
for his supper. The buck had nothing whatever to 
give his child, — nothing but his sympathy. If he 
said anything, this is what he said : " I 'm the head of 
this family ; but, really, this is a novel case. I 've 
nothing whatever for you. I don't know what to do. 
I Ve the feelings of a father ; but you can't live on 
them. Let us travel." 

The buck walked away : the little one toddled after 
him. They disappeared in the forest. , 



A CHARACTER STUDY 



There has been a lively inquiry after the primeval 
man. Wanted, a man who would satisfy the conditions 
of the miocene environment, and yet would be good 
enough for an ancestor. We are not particular about 
our ancestors, if they are sufficiently remote ; but we 
must have something. Failing to apprehend the pri- 
meval man, science has sought the primitive man where 
he exists as a survival in present savage races. He is, 
at best, only a mushroom growth of the recent period 
(came in, probably, with the general raft of mamma- 
lian fauna) ; but he possesses yet some rudimentary 
traits that may be studied. 

It is a good mental exercise to try to fix the mind 
on the primitive man divested of all the attributes he 
has acquired in his struggles with the other mammalian 
fauna. Fix the mind on an orange, the ordinary occu- 
pation of the metaphysician : take from it. without eat- 
ing it, odor, color, weight, form, substance, and peel ; 
then let the mind still dwell on it as an orange. The 
experiment is perfectly successful; only, at the end 
of it, you have n't any mind. Better still, consider the 
telephone : take away from it the metallic disk, and 
the magnetized iron, and the connecting wire, and then 
let the mind run abroad on the telephone. The mind 
won't come back. I have tried by this sort of process 
to get a conception of the primitive man. I let the 



A CHARACTER STUDY 49 

mind roam away back over the vast geologic spaces, 
and sometimes fancy I see a dim image of him stalking 
across the terrace epoch of the quaternary period. 

But this is an unsatisfying pleasure. The best results 
are obtained by studying the primitive man as he is 
left here and there in our era, a witness of what has 
been ; and I find him most to my mind in the Adiron- 
dack system of what geologists call the Champlain 
epoch. I suppose the primitive man is one who owes 
more to nature than to the forces of civilization. 
What we seek in him are the primal and original 
traits, unmixed with the sophistications of society, and 
unimpaired by the refinements of an artificial culture. 
He would retain the primitive instincts, which are 
cultivated out of the ordinary, commonplace man. I 
should expect to find him, by reason of an unrelin- 
quished kinship, enjoying a special communion with 
nature, — admitted to its mysteries, understanding its 
moods, and able to predict its vagaries. He would be 
a kind of test to us of what we have lost by our gre- 
garious acquisitions. On the one hand, there would 
be the sharpness of the senses, the keen instincts 
which the fox and beaver still possess, the ability to 
find one's way in the pathless forest, to follow a trail, 
to circumvent the wild denizens of the woods ; and, on 
the other hand, there would be the philosophy of life 
which the primitive man, with little external aid, would 
evolve from original observation and cogitation. It is 
our good fortune to know such a man ; but it is difficult 
to present him to a scientific and cavilling generation. 
He emigrated from somewhat limited conditions in 
Vermont, at an early age, nearly half a century ago, 
and sought freedom for his natural development back- 
ward in the wilds of the Adirondacks. Sometimes it 



50 A CHARACTER STUDY 

is a love of adventure and freedom that sends men out 
of the more civilized conditions into the less ; some- 
times it is a constitutional physical lassitude which 
leads them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the 
sickle, and the society of bears to town-meetings and 
taxes. I think that Old Mountain Phelps had merely 
the instincts of the primitive man, and never any hos- 
tile civilizing intent as to the wilderness into which he 
plunged. Why should he want to slash away the 
forest, and plough up the ancient mould, when it is 
infinitely pleasanter to roam about in the leafy soli- 
tudes, or sit upon a mossy log and listen to the chatter 
of birds and the stir of beasts ? Are there not trout 
in the streams, gum exuding from the spruce, sugar in 
the maples, honey in the hollow trees, fur on the sables, 
warmth in hickory-logs ? Will not a few days' plant- 
ing and scratching in the " open " yield potatoes and 
rye ? And, if there is steadier diet needed than veni- 
son and bear, is the pig an expensive animal ? If Old 
Phelps bowed to the prejudice or fashion of his age, 
— since we have come out of the tertiary state of 
things, — and reared a family, built a frame-house in a 
secluded nook by a cold spring, planted about it some 
apple-trees and a rudimentary garden, and installed a 
group of flaming sunflowers by the door, I am con- 
vinced that it was a concession that did not touch his 
radical character ; that is to say, it did not impair his 
reluctance to split oven-wood. 

He was a true citizen of the wilderness. Thoreau 
would have liked him, as he liked Indians and wood- 
chucks, and the smell of pine-forests; and, if Old 
Phelps had seen Thoreau, he would probably have 
said to him, " Why on airth, Mr. Thoreau, don't you 
live accordin' to your preachin' ? " You might be 



A CHARACTER STUDY 51 

misled by the shaggy suggestion of Old Phelps's given 
name — Orson — into the notion that he was a mighty 
hunter, with the fierce spirit of the Berserkers in his 
veins. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The 
hirsute and grisly sound of Orson expresses only his 
entire affinity with the untamed and the natural, an 
uncouth but gentle passion for the freedom and wild- 
ness of the forest. Orson Phelps has only those un- 
conventional and humorous qualities of the bear which 
make the animal so beloved in literature ; and one does 
not think of Old Phelps so much as a lover of nature, 
— to use the sentimental slang of the period, — as a 
part of nature itself. 

His appearance at the time when as a " guide " he 
began to come into public notice fostered this impres- 
sion, — a sturdy figure, with long body and short legs, 
clad in a woollen shirt and butternut-colored trousers 
repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his head sur- 
mounted by a limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed away 
at the top, so that his yellowish hair grew out of it 
like some nameless fern out of a pot. His tawny hair 
was long and tangled, matted now many years past 
the possibility of being entered by a comb. His fea- 
tures were small and delicate, and set in the frame of 
a reddish beard, the razor having mowed away a clear- 
ing about the sensitive mouth, which was not seldom 
wreathed with a child-like and charming smile. Out 
of this hirsute environment looked the small gray eyes, 
set near together ; eyes keen to observe, and quick to 
express change of thought ; eyes that made you be- 
lieve instinct can grow into philosophic judgment. 
His feet and hands were of aristocratic smallness, 
although the latter were not worn away by ablutions ; 
in fact, they assisted his toilet to give you the impres- 



52 A CHARACTER STUDY 

sion that here was a man who had just come out of the 
ground, — a real son of the soil, whose appearance was 
partially explained by his humorous relation to soap. 
" Soap is a thing," he said, " that I hain't no kinder 
use for." His clothes seemed to have been put on 
him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time 
ago. The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled 
by the contrast of this realistic and uncouth exterior 
with the internal fineness, amounting to refinement 
and culture, that shone through it all. What com- 
munion had supplied the place of our artificial breed- 
ing to this man ? 

Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was sitting 
on a log, with a short pipe in his mouth. If ever man 
was formed to sit on a log, it was Old Phelps. He was 
essentially a contemplative person. Walking on a 
country road, or anywhere in the " open," was irksome 
to him. He had a shambling, loose-jointed gait, not 
unlike that of the bear : his short legs bowed out, as 
if they had been more in the habit of climbing trees 
than of walking. On land, if we may use that expres- 
sion, he was something like a sailor ; but, once in the 
rugged trail or the unmarked route of his native forest, 
he was a different person, and few pedestrians could 
compete with him. The vulgar estimate of his con- 
temporaries, that reckoned Old Phelps " lazy," was 
simply a failure to comprehend the conditions of his 
being. It is the unjustness of civilization that it sets 
up uniform and artificial standards for all persons. 
The primitive man suffers by them much as the con- 
templative philosopher does, when one happens to 
arrive in this busy, fussy world. 

If the appearance of Old Phelps attracts attention, 
his voice, when first heard, invariably startles the lis- 



A CHARACTER STUDY 63 

tener. A small, high-pitched, half -querulous voice, it 
easily rises into the shrillest falsetto ; and it has a 
quality in it that makes it audible in all the tempestb 
of the forest, or the roar of rapids, like the piping of 
a boatswain's whistle at sea in a gale. He has a way 
of letting it rise as his sentence goes on, or when he is 
opposed in argument, or wishes to mount above other 
voices in the conversation, until it dominates every- 
thing. Heard in the depths of the woods, quavering 
aloft, it is felt to be as much a part of nature, an origi- 
nal force, as the northwest wind or the scream of the 
hen-hawk. When he is pottering about the camp-fire, 
trying to light his pipe with a twig held in the flame, 
he is apt to begin some philosophical observation in a 
small, slow, stumbling voice, which seems about to end 
in defeat, — when he puts on some unsuspected force, 
and the sentence ends in an insistent shriek. Horace 
Greeley had such a voice, and could regulate it in the 
same manner. But Phelps's voice is not seldom plain- 
tive, as if touched by the dreamy sadness of the woods 
themselves. 

When Old Mountain Phelps was discovered, he was, 
as the reader has already guessed, not understood by 
his contemporaries. His neighbors, farmers in the 
secluded valley, had many of them grown thrifty and 
prosperous, cultivating the fertile meadows, and vigo- 
rously attacking the timbered mountains; while Phelps, 
with not much more faculty of acquiring property than 
the roaming deer, had pursued the even tenor of the 
life in the forest on which he set out. They would 
have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps owned 
more of what makes the value of the Adirondacks than 
all of them put together, but it was true. This woods- 
man, this trapper, this hunter, this fisherman, this sit- 



54 A CHARACTER STUDY 

ter on a log, and philosopher, was the real proprietor 
of the region over which he was ready to guide the 
stranger. It is true that he had not a monopoly of its 
geography or its topography, though his knowledge 
was superior in these respects ; there were other trap- 
pers, and more deadly hunters, and as intrepid guides: 
but Old Phelps was the discoverer of the beauties and 
sublimities of the mountains ; and, when city strangers 
broke into the region, he monopolized the apprecia- 
tion of these delights and wonders of nature. I sup- 
pose, that, in all that country, he alone had noticed 
the sunsets, and observed the delightful processes of 
the seasons, taken pleasure in the woods for themselves, 
and climbed mountains solely for the sake of the pro- 
spect.^ He alone understood what was meant by 
" scenery." In the eyes of his neighbors, who did not 
know that he was a poet and a philosopher, I dare say 
he appeared to be a slack provider, a rather shiftless 
trapper and fisherman ; and his passionate love of the 
forest and the mountains, if it was noticed, was ac- 
counted to him for idleness. When the appreciative 
tourist arrived, Phelps was ready, as guide, to open to 
him all the wonders of his possessions ; he, for the first 
time, found an outlet for his enthusiasm, and a re- 
sponse to his own passion. It then became known 
what manner of man this was who had grown up here 
in the companionship of forests, mountains, and wild 
animals ; that these scenes had highly developed in 
him the love of beauty, the aesthetic sense, delicacy of 
appreciation, refinement of feeling ; and that, in his 
solitary wanderings and musings, the primitive man, 
self-taught, had evolved for himself a philosophy and 
a system of things. And it was a sufficient system, 
so long as it was not disturbed by external scepticism. 



A CHARACTER STUDY 55 

When the outer world came to him, perhaps he had 
about as much to give to it as to receive from it ; prob- 
ably more, in his own estimation ; for there is no con- 
ceit like that of isolation. 

Phelps loved his mountains. He was the discoverer 
of Marcy, and caused the first trail to be cut to its 
summit, so that others could enjoy the noble views 
from its round and rocky top. To him it was, in noble 
symmetry and beauty, the chief mountain of the globe. 
To stand on it gave him, as he said, '^ a feeling of hea- 
ven up-h'isted-ness." He heard with impatience that 
Mount Washington was a thousand feet higher, and 
he had a child-like incredulity about the surpassing 
sublimity of the Alps. Praise of any other elevation 
he seemed to consider a slight to Mount Marcy, and 
did not willingly hear it, any more than a lover hears 
the laudation of the beauty of another woman than 
the one he loves. When he showed us scenery he 
loved, it made him melancholy to have us speak of 
scenery elsewhere that was finer. And yet there was 
this delicacy about him, that he never over-praised 
what he brought us to see, any more than one would 
over-praise a friend of whom he was fond. I remem- 
ber, that, when for the first time, ^fter a toilsome jour- 
ney through the forest, the splendors of the Lower 
Ausable Pond broke upon our vision, — that low-lying 
silver lake, imprisoned by the precipices which it re- 
flected in its bosom, — he made no outward response 
to our burst of admiration : only a quiet gleam of the 
eye showed the pleasure our appreciation gave him. 
As some one said, it was as if his friend had been ad- 
mired, — a friend about whom he was unwilling to say 
much himself, but well pleased to have others praise. 

Thus far, we have considered Old Phelps as sim- 



56 A CHARACTER STUDY 

ply the product of the Adirondacks ; not so much 
a self-made man (as the doubtful phrase has it) as a 
natural growth amid primal forces. But our study 
is interrupted by another influence, which complicates 
the problem, but increases its interest. No scientific 
observer, so far as we know, has ever been able to 
watch the development of the primitive man, played 
upon and fashioned by the hebdomadal iteration of 
" Greeley's Weekly Tri-bune." Old Phelps educated 
by the woods is a fascinating study ; educated by the 
woods and the Tri-bune, he is a phenomenon. No 
one at this day can reasonably conceive exactly what 
this newspaper was to such a mountain valley as 
Keene. If it was not a Providence, it was a Bible. 
It was no doubt owing to it that Democrats became as 
scarce as moose in the Adirondacks. But it is not 
of its political aspect that I speak. I suppose that 
the most cultivated and best informed portion of the 
earth's surface — the Western Reserve of Ohio, as 
free from conceit as it is from a suspicion that it lacks 
anything — owes its pre-eminence solely to this com- 
prehensive journal. It received from it everything 
except a collegiate and a classical education, — things 
not to be desired, since they interfere with the self- 
manufacture of man. If Greek had been in this cur- 
riculum, its best known dictum would have been 
translated, " Make thyself." This journal carried to 
the community that fed on it not only a complete 
education in all departments of human practice and 
theorizing, but the more valuable and satisfying assur- 
ance that there was nothing more to be gleaned in 
the universe worth the attention of man. This pan- 
oplied its readers in completeness. Politics, litera- 
ture, arts, sciences, universal brotherhood and sister- 



A CHARACTER STUDY 57 

hood, — nothing was omitted ; neither the poetry of 
Tennyson, nor the philosophy of Margaret Fuller ; 
neither the virtues of association, nor of unbolted 
wheat. The laws of political economy and trade 
were laid down as positively and clearly as the best 
way to bake beans, and the saving truth that the mil- 
lennium would come, and come only when every foot 
of the earth was subsoiled. 

I do not say that Orson Phelps was the product of 
nature and the Tri-bune ; but he cannot be explained 
without considering these two factors. To him Gree- 
ley was the Tri-bune, and the Tri-bune was Greeley ; 
and yet I think he conceived of Horace Greeley as 
something greater than his newspaper, and perhaps 
capable of producing another journal equal to it in 
another part of the universe. At any rate, so com- 
pletely did Phelps absorb this paper and this person- 
ality, that he was popularly known as ''Greeley" in 
the region where he lived. Perhaps a fancied resem- 
blance of the two men in the popular mind had some- 
thing to do with this transfer of name. There is no 
doubt that Horace Greeley owed his vast influence in 
the country to his genius, nor much doubt that he 
owed his popularity in the rural districts to James 
Gordon Bennett ; that is, to the personality of the 
man which the ingenious Bennett impressed upon the 
country. That he despised the conventionalities of 
society, and was a sloven in his toilet, was firmly be- 
lieved ; and the belief endeared him to the hearts of 
the people. To them ''the old white coat" — an 
antique garment of unrenewed immortality — was as 
much a subject of idolatry as the redingote grise to 
the soldiers of the first Napoleon, who had seen it by 
the camp-fires on the Po and on the Borysthenes, and 



68 A CHARACTER STUDY 

believed that he would come again in it to lead them 
against the enemies of France. The Greeley of the 
popular heart was clad as Bennett said he was clad. 
It was in vain, even pathetically in vain, that he pub- 
lished in his newspaper the full bill of his fashionable 
tailor (the fact that it was receipted may have excited 
the animosity of some of his contemporaries) to show 
that he wore the best broadcloth, and that the folds 
of his trousers followed the city fashion of falling 
outside his boots. If this revelation was believed, it 
made no sort of impression in the country. The rural 
readers were not to be wheedled out of their cher- 
ished conception of the personal appearance of the 
philosopher of the Tri-bune. 

That the Tri-bune taught Old Phelps to be more 
Phelps than he would have been without it was part 
of the independence-teaching mission of Greeley's 
paper. The subscribers were an army, in which 
every man was a general. And I am not surprised 
to find Old Phelps lately rising to the audacity of 
criticising his exemplar. In some recently-published 
observations by Phelps upon the philosophy of read- 
ing is laid down this definition : " If I understand the 
necessity or use of reading, it is to reproduce again 
what has been said or proclaimed before. Hence let- 
ters, characters, &c., are arranged in all the perfec- 
tion they possibly can be, to show how certain lan- 
guage has been spoken by the original author. Now, 
to reproduce by reading, the reading should be so per- 
fectly like the original, that no one standing out of 
sight could tell the reading from the first time the lan- 
guage was spoken." 

This is illustrated by the highest authority at hand : 
'' I have heard as good readers read, and as poor read- 



A CHARACTER STUDY 59 

ers, as almost any one in this region. If I have not 
heard as many, I have had a chance to hear nearly 
the extreme in variety. Horace Greeley ought to 
have been a good reader. Certainly but few, if any, 
ever knew every word of the English language at a 
glance more readily than he did, or knew the mean- 
ing of every mark of punctuation more clearly ; but 
he could not read proper. ' But how do you know ? ' 
says one. From the fact, I heard him in the same 
lecture deliver or produce remarks in his own partic- 
ular way, that, if they had been published properly 
in print, a proper reader would have reproduced them 
again the same way. In the midst of those remarks 
Mr. Greeley took up a paper, to reproduce by reading 
part of a speech that some one else had made ; and 
his reading did not sound much more like the man 
that first read or made the speech than the clatter of 
a nail-factory sounds like a well-delivered speech. 
Now, the fault was not because Mr. Greeley did not 
know how to read as well as almost any man that ever 
lived, if not quite : but in his youth he learned to 
read wrong ; and, as it is ten times harder to unlearn 
anything than it is to learn it, he, like thousands of 
others, could never stop to unlearn it, but carried it 
on through his whole life." 

Whether a reader would be thanked for reproducing 
one of Horace Greeley's lectures as he delivered it is 
a question that cannot detain us here ; but the teach- 
ing that he ought to do so, I think, would please Mr. 
Greeley. 

The first driblets of professional tourists and sum- 
mer boarders who arrived among the Adirondack 
Mountains a few years ago found Old Phelps the chief 
and best guide of the region. Those who were eager 



60 A CHARACTER STUDY 

to throw off the usages of civilization, and tramp and 
camp in the wilderness, could not but be well satisfied 
with the aboriginal appearance of this guide ; and when 
he led off into the woods, axe in hand, and a huge can- 
vas sack upon his shoulders, they seemed to be follow- 
ing the Wandering Jew. The contents of this sack 
would have furnished a modern industrial exhibition, 
— provisions cooked and raw, blankets, maple-sugar, 
tin-ware, clothing, pork, Indian-meal, flour, coffee, tea, 
&c. Phelps was the ideal guide: he knew every foot 
of the pathless forest; he knew all wood-craft, all the 
signs of the weather, or, what is the same thing, how 
to make a Delphic prediction about it. He was fisher- 
man and hunter, and had been the comrade of sports- 
men and explorers ; and his enthusiasm for the beauty 
and sublimity of the region, and for its untamable 
wildness, amounted to a passion. He loved his pro- 
fession ; and yet it very soon appeared that he exercised 
it with reluctance for those who had neither ideality, 
nor love for the woods. Their presence was a profa- 
nation amid the scenery he loved. To guide into his 
private and secret haunts a party that had no apprecia- 
tion of their loveliness disgusted him. It was a waste 
of his time to conduct flippant young men and giddy 
girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the ex- 
pedition. And, for their part, they did not appreciate 
the benefit of being accompanied by a poet and a phi- 
losopher. They neither understood nor valued his 
special knowledge and his shrewd observations: they 
did n't even like his shrill voice ; his quaint talk bored 
them. It was true, that, at this period, Phelps had 
lost something of the activity of his youth ; and the 
habit of contemplative sitting on a log and talking in- 
creased with the infirmities induced by the hard life of 



A CHARACTER STUDY 61 

the woodsman. Perliaps he would rather talk, either 
about the woods-life or the various problems of exist- 
ence, than cut wood, or busy himself in the drudgery 
of the camp. His critics went so far as to say, " Old 
Phelps is a fraud." They would have said the same 
of Socrates. Xantippe, who never appreciated the 
world in which Socrates lived, thought he was lazy. 
Probably Socrates could cook no better than Old 
Phelps, and no doubt went " gumming " about Athens 
with very little care of what was in the pot for dinner. 
If the summer visitors measured Old Phelps, he 
also measured them by his own standards. He used 
to write out what he called " short-faced descriptions " 
of his comrades in the woods, which were never so 
flattering as true. It was curious to see how the vari- 
ous qualities which are esteemed in society appeared 
in his eyes, looked at merely in their relation to the 
limited world he knew, and judged by their adaptation 
to the primitive life. It was a much subtler compari- 
son than that of the ordinary guide, who rates his travel- 
ler by his ability to endure on a march, to carry a pack, 
use an oar, hit a mark, or sing a song. Phelps brought 
his people to a test of their naturalness and sincerity, 
tried by contact with the verities of the woods. If a 
person failed to appreciate the woods, Phelps had no 
opinion of him or his culture ; and yet, although he 
was perfectly satisfied with his own philosophy of life, 
worked out by close observation of nature and study 
of the Tri-bune, he was always eager for converse with 
superior minds, — with those who had the advantage 
of travel and much reading, and, above all, with those 
who had any original " speckerlation." Of all the so- 
ciety he was ever permitted to enjoy, I think he prized 
most that of Dr. Bushnell. The doctor enjoyed the 



62 A CHARACTER STUDY 

quaint and first-hand observations of the old woodsman, 
and Phelps found new worlds open to him in the wide 
ranges of the doctor's mind. They talked by the hour 
upon all sorts of themes, — the growth of the tree, the 
habits of wild animals, the migration of seeds, the suc- 
cession of oak and pine, not to mention theology, and 
the mysteries of the supernatural. 

I recall the bearing of Old Phelps, when, several 
years ago, he conducted a party to the summit of 
Mount Marcy by the way he had " bushed out." 
This was his mountain, and he had a peculiar sense 
of ownership in it. In a way, it was holy ground ; and 
he would rather no one should go on it who did not 
feel its sanctity. Perhaps it was a sense of some di- 
vine relation in it that made him always speak of it 
as "Mercy." To him this ridiculously dubbed Mount 
Marcy was always " Mount Mercy." By a like effort 
to soften the personal offensiveness of the nomencla- 
ture of this region, he invariably spoke of Dix's Peak, 
one of the southern peaks of the range, as " Dixie." 
It was some time since Phelps himself had visited his 
mountain ; and, as he pushed on through the miles of 
forest, we noticed a kind of eagerness in the old man, 
as of a lover going to a rendezvous. Along the foot 
of the mountain flows a clear trout-stream, secluded 
and undisturbed in those awful solitudes, which is the 
" Mercy Brook " of the old woodsman. That day 
when he crossed it, in advance of his company, he was 
heard to say in a low voice, as if greeting some object 
of which he was shyly fond, " So, little brook, do I 
meet you once more?" and when we were well up the 
mountain, and emerged from the* last stunted fringe 
of vegetation upon the rock-bound slope, I saw Old 
Phelps, who was still foremost, cast himself upon the 



A CHARACTER STUDY • 63 

gTOTind, and heard him cry, with an enthusiasm that 
was intended for no mortal ear, " I 'm with you once 
again ! " His great passion very rarely found expres- 
sion in any such theatrical burst. The bare summit 
that day was swept by a fierce, cold wind, and lost in 
an occasional chilling cloud. Some of the party, ex- 
hausted by the climb, and shivering in the rude wind, 
wanted a fire kindled and a cup of tea made, and 
thought this the guide's business. Fire and tea were 
far enough from his thought. He had withdraw^n 
himself quite apart, and, wrapped in a ragged blanket, 
still and silent as the rock he stood on, was gazing 
out upon the wilderness of peaks. The view from 
Marcy is peculiar. It is without softness or relief. 
The narrow valleys are only dark shadows ; the lakes 
are bits of broken mirror. From horizon to horizon 
there is a tumultuous sea of billows turned to stone. 
You stand upon the highest billow ; you command the 
situation ; you have surprised Nature in a high crea- 
tive act ; the mighty primal energy has only just be- 
come repose. This was a supreme hour to OH Phelps. 
Tea ! I believe the boys succeeded in kindling a fire ; 
but the enthusiastic stoic had no reason to complain of 
want of appreciation in the rest of the party. When 
we were descending, he told us, with mingled humor 
and scorn, of a party of ladies he once led to the top 
of the mountain on a still day, who began immediately 
to talk about the fashions! As he related the scene, 
stopping and facing us in the trail, his mild, far-in 
eyes came to the front, and his voice rose with his 
language to a kind of scream. 

'' Why, there they were, right before the greatest 
view they ever saw^ talkin' about the fashions / ^' 

Impossible to convey the accent of contempt in 



64 . A CHARACTER STUDY 

which he pronounced the word " fashions," and then 
added, with a sort of regretful bitterness, — 

" I was a great mind to come down, and leave 'em 
there." 

In common with the Greeks, Old Phelps personi- 
fied the woods, mountains, and streams. They had 
not only personality, but distinctions of sex. It was 
something beyond the characterization of the hunter, 
which appeared, for instance, when he related a fight 
with a panther, in such expressions as, " Then Mr. 
Panther thought he would see what he could do," &c. 
He was in "imaginative sympathy" with all wild 
things. The afternoon we descended Marcy, we went 
away to the west, through the primeval forests toward 
Avalanche and Golden, and followed the course of the 
charming Opalescent. When we reached the leaping 
stream, Phelps exclaimed, — 

" Here 's little Miss Opalescent ! " 

" Why don't you say Mr. Opalescent? " some one 
asked. 

" Oh, she 's too pretty ! " And too pretty she 
was, with her foam-white and rainbow dress, and her 
downfalls, and fountain-like uprising. A bewitching 
young person we found her all that summer after- 
noon. 

This sylph-like person had little in common with a 
monstrous lady whose adventures in the wilderness 
Phelps was fond of relating. She was built something 
on the plan of the mountains, and her ambition to 
explore was equal to her size. Phelps and the other 
guides once succeeded in raising her to the top of 
Marcy ; but the feat of getting a hogshead of molasses 
up there would have been easier. In attempting to 
give us an idea of her magnitude that night, as we 



A CHARACTER STUDY 65 

sat in the forest camp, Phelps hesitated a moment, 
while he cast his eye around the woods : '' Waal, there 
aint no tree ! " 

It is only by recalling fragmentary remarks and 
incidents that I can put the reader in possession of 
the peculiarities of my subject ; and this involves the 
wrenching of things out of their natural order and 
continuity, and introducing them abruptly, — an ab- 
ruptness illustrated by the remark of '• Old Man Hos- 
kins," which Phelps liked to quote, when one day he 
suddenly slipped down a bank into a thicket, and 
seated himself in a wasps' nest : '' I hain't no business 
here ; but here I be I " 

The first time we went into camp on the Upper 
Ausable Pond, which has been justly celebrated as 
the most prettily set sheet of water in the region, we 
were disposed to build our shanty on the south side, 
so that we could have in full view the Gothics and that 
loveliest of mountain contours. To our surprise. Old 
Phelps, whose sentimental weakness for these moun- 
tains we knew, opposed this. His favorite camping- 
ground was on the north side, — a pretty site in itself, 
but with no special view. In order to enjoy the lovely 
mountains, we should be obliged to row out into the 
lake : we wanted them always before our eyes, — at 
sunrise and sunset, and in the blaze of noon. With 
deliberate speech, as if weighing our arguments and 
disposing of them, he replied, " Waal, now, them 
Gothics ain't the kinder scenery you want ter hog 
dovm! " 

It was on quiet Sundays in the woods, or in talks 
by the camp-fire, that Phelps came out as the philoso- 
pher, and commonly contributed the light of his obser- 
vations. Unfortunate marriages, and marriages in 



66 A CHARACTER STUDY 

general, were, on one occasion, the subject of discus- 
sion ; and a good deal of darkness had been cast on 
it by various speakers ; when Phelps suddenly piped 
up, from a log where he had sat silent, almost invis- 
ible, in the shadow and smoke, — 

" Waal, now, when you Ve said all there is to be 
said, marriage is mostly for discipline." 

Discipline, certainly, the old man had, in one way 
or another ; and years of solitary communing in the 
forest had given him, perhaps, a childlike insight into 
spiritual concerns. Whether he had formulated any 
creed or what faith he had, I never knew. Keene 
Valley had a reputation of not ripening Christians 
any more successfully than maize, the season there 
being short ; and on our first visit it was said to con- 
tain but one Bible Christian, though I think an accu- 
rate census disclosed three. Old Phelps, who some- 
times made abrupt remarks in trying situations, was 
not included in this census ; but he was the disciple 
of supernaturalism in a most charming form. I have 
heard of his opening his inmost thoughts to a lady, one 
Sunday, after a noble sermon of Eobertson's had been 
read in the cathedral stillness of the forest. His 
experience was entirely first-hand, and related with 
unconsciousness that it was not common to all. There 
was nothing of the mystic or the sentimentalist, only a 
vivid realism, in that nearness of God of which he 
spoke, — "as near sometimes as those trees," — and 
of the holy voice, that, in a time of inward struggle, 
had seemed to him to come from the depths of the 
forest, saying, " Poor soul, I am the way." 

In later years there was a " revival " in Keene Val- 
ley, the result of which was a number of young " con- 
verts," whom Phelps seemed to regard as a veteran 



A CHARACTER STUDY 67 

might raw recruits, and to have his doubts what sort 
of soldiers they would make. 

" Waal, Jimmy," he said to one of them, " you 've 
kindled a pretty good fire with light wood. That 's 
what we do of a dark night in the woods, you know ; 
but we do it just so as we can look around and find the 
solid wood : so now put on your solid wood." 

In the Sunday Bible-classes of the period Phelps 
was a perpetual anxiety to the others, who followed 
closely the printed lessons, and beheld with alarm his 
discursive efforts to get into freer air and light. His 
remarks were the most refreshing part of the exercises, 
but were outside of the safe path into which the others 
thought it necessary to win him from his " speckerla- 
tions." The class were one day on the verses concern- 
ing " God's word " being " written on the heart," and 
were keeping close to the shore, under the guidance of 
" Barnes's Notes," when Old Phelps made a dive to the 
bottom, and remarked that he had " thought a good 
deal about the expression, ' God's word written on the 
heart,' and had been asking himself how that was to 
be done ; and suddenly it occurred to him, having been 
much interested lately in watching the work of a pho- 
tographer, that, when a photograph is going to be 
taken, all that has to be done is to put the object in 
position, and the sun makes the picture ; and so he 
rather thought that all we had got to do was to put our 
hearts in place, and God would do the writin'." 

Phelps's theology, like his science, is first-hand. 
In the woods, one day, talk ran on the Trinity as being 
nowhere asserted as a doctrine in the Bible, and some 
one suggested that the attempt to pack these great and 
fluent mysteries into one word must always be more 
or less unsatisfactory. " JT^-es," droned Phelps : " I 



68 A CHARACTER STUDY 

never could see much speckerlation in that expression 
the Trinity. Why, they 'd a good deal better say 
Legion,'''' 

The sentiment of the man about nature, or his poetic 
sensibility, was frequently not to be distinguished 
from a natural religion, and was always tinged with 
the devoutness of Wordsworth's verse. Climbing 
slowly one day up the Balcony, — he was more than 
usually calm and slow, — he espied an exquisite fragile 
flower in the crevice of a rock, in a very lonely spot. 

" It seems as if," he said, or rather dreamed out, — 
" it seems as if the Creator had kept something just 
to look at himself." 

To a lady whom he had taken to Chapel Pond, a 
retired but rather uninteresting spot, and who ex- 
pressed a little disappointment at its tameness, say- 

" Why, Mr. Phelps, the principal charm of this 
place seems to be its loneliness," — 

"Yes," he replied in gentle and lingering tones, 
" and its nativeness. It lies here just where it was 
born." 

Rest and quiet had infinite attractions for him. A 
secluded opening in the woods was a " calm spot." 
He told of seeing once, or rather being ^7^, a circular 
rainbow. He stood on Indian Head, overlooking the 
Lower Lake, so that he saw the whole bow in the sky 
and the lake, and seemed to be in the midst of it ; 
"only at one place there was an indentation in it, 
where it rested on the lake, just enough to keep it from 
rolling off." This "resting" of the sphere seemed to 
give him great comfort. 

One Indian-summer morning in October, some 
ladies found the old man sitting on his doorstep, smok- 



A CHARACTER STUDY 69 

ing a short pipe. He gave no sign of recognition of 
their approach, except a twinkle of the eye, being evi- 
dently quite in harmony with the peaceful day. They 
stood there a full minute before he opened his mouth : 
then he did not rise, but slowly took his pipe from his 
mouth, and said in a dreamy way, pointing towards 
the brook, — 

" Do you see that tree ? " indicating a maple almost 
denuded of leaves, which lay like a yellow garment 
cast at its feet. " I 've been watching that tree all the 
morning. There hain't been a breath of wind : but 
for hours the leaves have been falling, falling, just as 
you see them now ; and at last it 's pretty much bare." 
And after a pause, pensively : " Waal, I suppose its 
hour had come." 

This contemplative habit of Old Phelps is wholly 
unappreciated by his neighbors ; but it has been in- 
dulged in no inconsiderable part of his life. Rising 
after a time, he said, " Now I want you to go with me 
and see my golden city 1 've talked so much about." 
He led the way to a hill-outlook, when suddenly, 
emerging from the forest, the spectators saw revealed 
the winding valley and its stream. He said quietly, 
" There is my golden city." Far below, at their feet, 
they saw that vast assemblage of birches and ''pop- 
ples," yellow as gold in the brooding noonday, and 
slender spires rising out of the glowing mass. With- 
out another word, Phelps sat a long time in silent con- 
tent : it was to him, as Bunyan says, '' a place desirous 
to be in." 

Is this philosopher contented with what life has 
brought him ? Speaking of money one day, when we 
had asked him if he should do differently if he had 
his life to live over again, he said, '' Yes, but not about 



70 A CHARACTER STUDY 

money. To have had hours such as I have had in 
these mountains, and with such men as Dr. Bushnell 
and Dr. Shaw and Mr. Twichell, and others I could 
name, is worth all the money the world could give." 
He read character very well, and took in accurately 
the boy nature. " Tom," — an irrepressible, rather 
overdone specimen, — " Tom 's a nice kind of a boy ; 
but he 's got to come up against a snubbin'-post one 
of these days." — " Boys ! " he once said : " you can't 
git boys to take any kinder notice of scenery. I never 
yet saw a boy that would look a second time at a sun- 
set. Now, a girl will sometimes ; but even then it 's 
instantaneous, — comes and goes like the sunset. As 
for me," still speaking of scenery, " these mountains 
about here, that I see every day, are no more to me, in 
one sense, than a man's farm is to him. What mostly 
interests me now is when I see some new freak or shape 
in the face of Nature." 

In literature it may be said that Old Phelps prefers 
the best in the very limited range that has been open 
to him. Tennyson is his favorite among poets; an 
affinity explained by the fact that they are both lotos- 
eaters. Speaking of a lecture-room talk of Mr. 
Beecher's which he had read, he said, " It filled my 
cup about as full as I callerlate to have it : there was a 
good deal of truth in it, and some poetry ; waal, and 
a little spice too. We 've got to have the spice, you 
know." He admired, for different reasons, a lecture 
by Greeley that he once heard, into which so much 
knowledge of various kinds was crowded, that he said 
he " made a reg'lar gobble of it." He was not with- 
out discrimination, which he exercised upon the local 
preaching when nothing better offered. Of one ser- 
mon he said, " The man began way back at the ere- 



A CHARACTER STUDY 71 

ation, and just preached right along down ; and he 
did n't say nothing, after all. It just seemed to me as 
if he was tryin' to git up a kind of a fix-up." 

Old Phelps used words sometimes like algebraic 
signs, and had a habit of making one do duty for a 
season together for all occasions. " Speckerlation " 
and " callerlation " and " fix up " are specimens of 
words that were prolific in expression. An unusual 
expression, or an unusual article, would be character- 
ized as a " kind of a scientific literary git-up." 

*' What is the programme for to-morrow ? " I once 
asked him. " Waal, I callerlate, if they rig up the 
callerlation they callerlate on, we '11 go to the Boreas." 
Starting out for a day's tramp in the woods, he would 
ask whether we wanted to take a " reg'lar walk, or a 
random scoot," — the latter being a plunge into the 
pathless forest. When he was on such an expedition, 
and became entangled in dense brush, and maybe a 
network of " slash " and swamp, he was like an old 
wizard, as he looked here and there, seeking a way, 
peering into the tangle, or withdrawing from a thicket, 
and muttering to himself, '' There ain't no speckerla- 
tion there." And when the way became altogether 
inscrutable, " Waal, this is a reg'lar random scoot 
of a rigmarole." As some one remarked, " The dic- 
tionary in his hands is like clay in the hands of the 
potter." A petrifaction was a " kind of a hard-wood 
chemical git-up." 

There is no conceit, we are apt to say, like that born 
of isolation from the world, and there are no such con- 
ceited people as those who have lived all their lives in 
the woods. Phelps was, however, unsophisticated in 
his until the advent of strangers into his life, who 
brought in literature and various other disturbing 



72 A CHARACTER STUDY 

influences, I am sorry to say that the effect has been 
to take off something of the bloom of his simplicity, 
and to elevate him into an oracle. I suppose this 
is inevitable as soon as one goes into print; and 
Phelps has gone into print in the local papers. He 
has been bitten with the literary "git-up." Justly 
regarding most of the Adirondack literature as a 
" perfect fizzle," he has himself projected a work, and 
written much on the natural history of his region. 
Long ago he made a large map of the mountain coun- 
try; and, until recent surveys, it was the only one 
that could lay any claim to accuracy. His history is 
no doubt original in form, and unconventional in 
expression. Like most of the writers of the seven- 
teenth century, and the court ladies and gentlemen of 
the eighteenth century, he is an independent speller. 
Writing of his work on the Adirondacks, he says, " If 
I should ever live to get this wonderful thing written, 
I expect it will show one thing, if no more ; and that 
is, that everything has an opposite. I expect to show 
in this that literature has an opposite, if I do not show 
anything else. We could not enjoy the blessings and 
happiness of riteousness if we did not know innicuty 
was in the world : in fact, there would be no riteous- 
ness without innicuty." Writing also of his great 
enjoyment of being in the woods, especially since he 
has had the society there of some people he names, he 
adds, '' And since I have Literature, Siance, and Art 
all spread about on the green moss of the mountain 
woods or the gravell banks of a cristle stream, it 
seems like finding roses, honeysuckels, and violets on 
a crisp brown cliff in December. You know I don't 
believe much in the religion of seramony ; but any 
riteous thing that has life and spirit in it is food for 



A CHARACTER STUDY 73 

me." I must not neglect to mention an essay, con- 
tinued in several numbers of his local paper, on '' The 
Growth of the Tree," in which he demohshes the the- 
ory of ]\Ir. Greeley, whom he calls '* one of the best 
vegetable philosophers,'' about ''growth without seed." 
He treats of the office of sap. ''All trees have some 
kind of sap and some kind of operation of sap flowing 
in their season," — the dissemination of seeds, the pro- 
cesses of growth, the power of healing wounds, the pro- 
portion of roots to branches, cS:c. Speaking of the 
latter, he says, '* I have thought it would be one of the 
greatest curiosities on earth to see a thrifty growing 
maple or elm. that had grown on a deep soil interval 
to be two feet in diameter, to be raised clear into the 
air with every root and fibre down to the minutest 
thread, all entirely cleared of soil, so that every par- 
ticle could be seen in its natural position. I think it 
would astonish even the wise ones." From his instinc- 
tive sympathy with nature, he often credits vegetable 
organism with ''instinctive judgment." •'Observa- 
tion teaches us that a tree is given powerful instincts, 
which would almost appear to amount to judgment in 
some cases, to provide for its own wants and necessi- 
ties." 

Here our study must cease, ^hen the primitive 
man comes into literature, he is no longer primitive. 



CAMPING OUT 



It seems to be agreed that civilization is kept up 
only by a constant effort. Nature claims its own 
speedily when the effort is relaxed. If you clear a 
patch of fertile ground in the forest, uproot the stumps 
and plant it, year after year, in potatoes and maize, 
you say you have subdued it. But if you leave it 
for a season or two, a kind of barbarism seems to steal 
out upon it from the circling woods ; coarse grass and 
brambles cover it ; bushes spring up in a wild tangle ; 
the raspberry and the blackberry flower and fruit, 
and the humorous bear feeds upon them. The last 
state of the ground is worse than the first. 

Perhaps the cleared spot is called Ephesus. 
There is a splendid city on the plain ; there are tem- 
ples and theatres on the hills ; the commerce of the 
world seeks its port ; the luxury of the Orient flows 
through its marble streets. You are there one day 
when the sea has receded: the plain is a pestilent 
marsh ; the temples, the theatres, the lofty gates, have 
sunken and crumbled, and the wild-brier runs over 
them ; and, as you grow pensive in the most desolate 
place in the world, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, 
and offers to relieve you of all that which creates arti- 
ficial distinctions in society. The higher the civil- 
ization has risen, the more abject is the desolation 
of barbarism that ensues. The most melancholy spot 



CAMPING OUT 76 

in the Adirondacks is not a tamarack-swamp, where 
the traveller wades in moss and mire, and the at- 
mosphere is composed of equal active parts of black- 
flies, mosquitos, and midges. It is the village of the 
Adirondack Iron- Works, where the streets of gaunt 
houses are falling to pieces, tenantless; the factory- 
wheels have stopped ; the furnaces are in ruins ; the 
iron and wooden machinery is strewn about in help- 
less detachment ; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and slag 
proclaim an arrested industry. Beside this deserted 
village, even Calamity Pond, shallow, sedgy, with its 
ragged shores of stunted firs, and its melancholy shaft 
that marks the spot where the proprietor of the iron- 
works accidentally shot himself, is cheerful. 

The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodi- 
cally to throw away the habits of civilization, and 
seek the freedom and discomfort of the woods, is ex- 
plicable enough ; but it is not so easy to understand 
why this passion should be strongest in those who 
are most refined, and most trained in intellectual 
and social fastidiousness. Philistinism and shoddy 
do not like the woods, unless it becomes fashionable 
to do so ; and then, as speedily as possible they in- 
troduce their artificial luxuries, and reduce the life in 
the wilderness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic. 
It is they who have strewn the Adirondacks with 
paper collars and tin cans. The real enjoyment of 
camping and tramping in the woods lies in a return 
to primitive conditions of lodging, dress, and food, in 
as total an escape as may be from the requirements of 
civilization. And it remains to be explained why this 
is enjoyed most by those who are most highly civilized. 
It is wonderful to see how easily the restraints of so- 
ciety fall off. Of course it is not true that courtesy 



76 CAMPING OUT 

depends upon clothes with the best people ; but, with 
others, behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress. 
Many good habits are easily got rid of in the woods. 
Doubt sometimes seems to be felt whether Sunday is a 
legal holiday there. It becomes a question of casuistry 
with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on 
Sunday, if none of his congregation are present. He 
intends no harm : he only gratifies a curiosity to see if 
he can hit the mark. Where shall he draw the line ? 
Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk or 
shout at a loon. Might lie fire at a mark with an 
air-gun that makes no noise ? He will not fish or 
hunt on Sunday (although he is no more likely to 
catch anything that day than on any other) ; but 
may he eat trout that the guide has caught on Sun- 
day, if the guide swears he caught them Saturday 
night ? Is there such a thing as a vacation in reli- 
gion ? How much of our virtue do we owe to inher- 
ited habits ? 

I am not at all sure whether this desire to camp 
outside of civilization is creditable to human nature, 
or otherwise. We hear sometimes that the Turk has 
been merely camping for four centuries in Europe. 
I suspect that many of us are, after all, really camp- 
ing temporarily in civilized conditions ; and that 
going into the wilderness is an escape, longed forp 
into our natural and preferred state. Consider what 
this " camping out " is, that is confessedly so agreeable 
to people most delicately reared. I have no desire 
to exaggerate its delights. 

The Adirondack wilderness is essentially unbroken. 
A few bad roads that penetrate it, a few jolting 
wagons that traverse them, a few barn-like boarding- 
houses on the edge of the forest, where the boarders 



CAMPING OUT 77 

are soothed by patent coffee, and stimulated to unnat- 
ural gayety by Japan tea, and experimented on by 
unique cookery, do little to destroy the savage f ascina* 
tion of the region. In half an hour, at any point, one 
can put himself into solitude and every desirable dis- 
comfort. The party that covets the experience of the 
camp comes down to primitive conditions of dress and 
equipment. There are guides and porters to carry 
the blankets for beds, the raw provisions, and the 
camp equipage ; and the motley party of the tempo- 
rarily decivilized files into the woods, and begins, per- 
haps by a road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and 
weary march. The exhilaration arises partly from 
the casting aside of restraint, partly from the adven- 
ture of exploration ; and the weariness, from the in- 
terminable toil of bad walking, a heavy pack, and the 
grim monotony of trees and bushes, that shut out all 
prospect, except an occasional glimpse of the sky. 
Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded, 
lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy '' car- 
ries " traversed. Fancy this party the victim of polit- 
ical exile, banished by the law, and a more sorrowful 
march could not be imagined ; but the voluntary 
hardship becomes pleasure, and it is undeniable that 
the spirits of the party rise as the difficulties increase. 
For this straggling and stumbling band the world is 
young again ; it has come to the beginning of things ; 
it has cut loose from tradition, and is free to make a 
home anywhere : the movement has all the promise of 
a revolution. All this virginal freshness invites the 
primitive instincts of play and disorder. The free 
range of the forests suggests endless possibilities of 
exploration and possession. Perhaps we are treading 
where man since the creation never trod before ; per- 



78 CAMPING OUT 

haps the waters of this bubbling spring, which we 
deepen by scraping out the decayed leaves and the 
black earth, have never been tasted before, except by 
the wild denizens of these woods. We cross the trails 
of lurking animals, — paths that heighten our sense 
of seclusion from the world. The hammering of the 
infrequent woodpecker, the call of the lonely bird, the 
drumming of the solitary partridge, — all these sounds 
do but emphasize the lonesomeness of nature. The 
roar of the mountain brook, dashing over its bed of 
pebbles, rising out of the ravine, and spreading, as it 
were, a mist of sound through all the forest (contin- 
uous beating waves that have the rhythm of eternity 
in them), and the fitful movement of the air-tides 
through the balsams and firs and the giant pines, — 
how these grand symphonies shut out the little exas- 
perations of our vexed life ! It seems easy to begin 
life over again on the simplest terms. Probably it is 
not so much the desire of the congregation to escape 
from the preacher, or of the preacher to escape from 
himself, that drives sophisticated people into the wil- 
derness, as it is the unconquered craving for primitive 
simplicity, the revolt against the everlasting dress* 
parade of our civilization. From this monstrous pom- 
posity even the artificial rusticity of a Petit Trianon ^ 
is a relief. It was only human nature that the jaded 
Frenchman of the regency should run away to the 
New World, and live in a forest-hut with an Indian 
squaw ; although he found little satisfaction in his act 
of heroism, unless it was talked about at Versailles. 

When our trampers come, late in the afternoon, to 
the bank of a lovely lake where they purpose to enter 
the primitive life, everything is waiting for them in 

^ A little palace near the royal one at Versailles. 



CAMPING OUT 79 

virgin expectation. There is a little promontory jut- 
ting into the lake, and sloping down to a sandy beach, 
on which the waters idly lapse, and shoals of red-fins 
and shiners come to greet the stranger ; the forest is 
untouched by the axe; the tender green sweeps the 
water's edge ; ranks of slender firs are marshalled by 
the shore ; clumps of white-birch stems shine in satin 
purity among the evergreens; the boles of giant 
spruces, maples, and oaks, lifting high their crowns of 
foliage, stretch away in endless galleries and arcades ; 
through the shifting leaves the sunshine falls upon 
the brown earth ; overhead are fragments of blue sky ; 
under the boughs and in chance openings appear the 
bluer lake and the outline of the gracious mountains. 
The discoverers of this paradise, which they have en- 
tered to destroy, note the babbling of the brook that 
flows close at hand ; they hear the splash of the leap- 
ing fish ; they listen to the sweet, metallic song of the 
evening thrush, and the chatter of the red squirrel, 
who angrily challenges their right to be there. But 
the moment of sentiment passes. This party has come 
here to eat and to sleep, and not to encourage Nature 
in her poetic attitudinizing. 

The spot for a shanty is selected. This side shall 
be its opening, towards the lake ; and in front of it 
the fire, so that the smoke shall drift into the hut, and 
discourage the mosquitoes ; yonder shall be the cook's 
fire and the path to the spring. The whole colony 
bestir themselves in the foundation of a new home, — 
an enterprise that has all the fascination, and none of 
the danger, of a veritable new settlement in the wil- 
derness. The axes of the guides resound in the echo- 
ing spaces ; great trunks fall with a crash ; vistas are 
opened towards the lake and the mountains. The 



80 CAMPING OUT 

spot for the shanty is cleared of underbrush; forked 
stakes are driven into the ground, cross-pieces are 
laid on them, and poles sloping back to the ground. 
In an incredible space of time there is the skeleton of 
a house, which is entirely open in front. The roof 
and sides must be covered. For this purpose the 
trunks of great spruces are skinned. The woodman 
rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and again six 
feet above, and slashes it perpendicularly ; then, with 
a blunt stick, he crowds off this thick hide exactly as 
an ox is skinned. It needs but a few of these skins 
to cover the roof ; and they make a perfectly water- 
tight roof, except when it rains. Meantime, busy 
hands have gathered boughs of the spruce and the 
feathery balsam, and shingled the ground underneath 
the shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed : in the- 
ory it is elastic and consoling. Upon it are spread 
the blankets. The sleepers, of all sexes and ages, are 
to lie there In a row, their feet to the fire, and their 
heads under the edge of the sloping roof. Nothing 
could be better contrived. The fire is in front : it is 
not a fire, but a conflagration — a vast heap of green 
logs set on fire — of pitch, and split dead-wood, and 
crackling balsams, raging and roaring. By the time 
twilight falls, the cook has prepared supper. Every- 
thing has been cooked in a tin pail and a skillet, — 
potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You wonder 
how everything could have been prepared in so few 
utensils. When you eat, the wonder ceases : every- 
thing might have been cooked in one pail. It is a 
noble meal ; and nobly is it disposed of by these ama- 
teur savages, sitting about upon logs and roots of 
trees. Never were there such potatoes, never beans 
that seemed to have more of the bean in them, 



CAMPING OUT 81 

never such curly pork, never trout with more In- 
dian-meal on them, never mutton more distinctly 
sheepy ; and the tea, drunk out of a tin cup, with a 
lump of maple-sugar dissolved in it, — it is the sort 
of tea that takes hold, lifts the haii^ and disposes the 
drinker to anecdote and hilariousness. There is no 
deception about it : it tastes of tannin and spruce and 
creosote. Everything, in short, has the flavor of the 
wilderness and a free life. It is idyllic. And yet, 
with all our sentimentality, there is nothing feeble 
about the cooking. The slapjacks are a solid job of 
work, made to last, and not go to pieces in a per- 
son's stomach like a trivial bun : we might record on 
them, in cuneiform characters, our incipient civiliza- 
tion; and future generations would doubtless turn 
them up as Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals 
are what the primitive man wants. 

Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light 
from our conflagration the woods are black. There 
is a tremendous impression of isolation and lonesome- 
ness in our situation. We are the prisoners of the 
night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysteri- 
ous. The trees are gigantic. There are noises that 
we do not understand, — mysterious winds passing 
overhead, and rambling in the great galleries, tree- 
trunks grinding against each other, undefinable stirs 
and uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into 
tiie dimness are outlined in monstrous proportionSo 
The spectres, seated about in the glare of the fire, 
talk about appearances and presentiments and reli- 
gion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, 
and catamount encounters, and frozen-to-death expe- 
riences, and simple tales of great prolixity and no 
point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. We hear cata- 



82 CAMPING OUT 

mounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, 
and the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, 
the laughter of the loon. Everything is strange, 
spectral, fascinating. 

By and by we get our positions in the shanty for 
the night, and arrange the row of sleepers. The 
shanty has become a smoke-house by this time: 
waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. It is only 
by lying down, and getting the head well under the 
eaves, that one can breathe. No one can find her 
" things ; " nobody has a pillow. At length the row 
is laid out, with the solemn protestation of intention 
to sleep. The wind, shifting, drives away the smoke. 
Good-night is said a hundred times ; positions are re- 
adjusted, more last words, new shifting about, final 
remarks ; it is all so comfortable and romantic ; and 
then silence. Silence continues for a minute. The 
fire flashes up ; all the row of heads is lifted up simul- 
taneously to watch it ; showers of sparks sail aloft into 
the blue night ; the vast vault of greenery is a fairy 
spectacle. How the sparks mount and twinkle and 
disappear like tropical fire-flies, and all the leaves 
murmur, and clap their hands ! Some of the sparks 
do not go out : we see them flaming in the sky when 
the flame of the fire has died down. Well, good- 
night, good-night. More folding of the arms to 
sleep ; more grumbling about the hardness of a hand- 
bag, or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief, for 
a pillow. Good-night. Was that a remark? — 
something about a root, a stub in the ground sticking 
into the back. '' You could n't lie along a hair? " — 
" Well, no : here 's another stub.'' It needs but a 
moment for the conversation to become general,-- 
about roots under the shoulder, stubs in the back, a 



CAMPING OUT 83 

ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to bal- 
ance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the 
ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects 
of remarks multiply. The whole camp is awake, and 
chattering like an aviary. The owl is also awake; 
but the guides who are asleep outside make more 
noise than the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed 
about in a dipper. Everybody is yawning; every- 
body is now determined to go to sleep in good ear- 
nest. A last good-night. There is an appalling 
silence. It is interrupted in the most natural way 
in the world. Somebody has got the start, and gone 
to sleep. He proclaims the fact. He seems to have 
been brought up on the seashore, and to know how 
to make all the deep-toned noises of the restless 
ocean. He is also like a war-horse; or, it is sug- 
gested, like a saw-horse. How malignantly he snorts, 
and breaks off short, and at once begins again in an- 
other key ! One head is raised after another. 

"Who is that?" 

" Somebody punch him." 

*' Turn him over." 

" Reason with him." 

The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a mis- 
take. He was before, it appears, on his most agree- 
able side. The camp rises in indignation. The sleeper 
sits up in bewilderment. Before he can go off again, 
two or three others have preceded him. They are all 
alike. You can never judge what a person is when 
he is awake. There are here half a dozen disturbers 
of the peace who should be put in solitary confine- 
ment. At midnight, when a philosopher crawls out 
to sit on a log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in 
tenor and mezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, 



84 CAMPING OUT 

with a chorus always ooming in at the wrong time. 
Those who are not asleep want to know why the 
smoker does n't go to bed. He is requested to get 
some water, to throw on another log, to see what time 
it is, to note whether it looks like rain. A buzz of 
conversation arises. She is sure she heard something 
behind the shanty. He says it is all nonsense. '' Per- 
haps, however, it might be a mouse." 

" Mercy! Are there mice ? " 

'' Plenty." 

" Then that 's what I heard nibbling by my head. I 
sha'n't sleep a wink ! Do they bite ? " 

"No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full bite 
out." 

"It's horrid!" 

Towards morning it grows chilly ; the guides have 
let the fire go out ; the blankets will slip down. Anx- 
iety begins to be expressed about the dawn. 

" What time does the sun rise? " 

" Awful early. Did you sleep ? " 

" Not a wink. And you ? " 

" In spots. I 'm going to dig up this root as soon 
as it is light enough." 

"See that mist on the lake, and the light just com- 
ing on the Gothics ! I 'd no idea it was so cold : all 
the first part of the night I was roasted." 

" What were they talking about all night ? '* 

When the party crawls out to the early breakfast, 
after it has washed its faces in the lake, it is disor- 
ganized, but cheerful. Nobody admits much sleep; 
but everybody is refreshed, and declares it delightful. 
It is the fresh air all night that invigorates ; or maybe 
it is the tea or the slapjacks. The guides have erected 
a table of spruce bark, with benches at the sides ; so 



CAMPING OUT 85 

that breakfast is taken in form. It is served on tin 
plates and oak chips. After breakfast begins the 
day's work. It may be a mountain-climbing expedi- 
tion, or rowing and angling in the lake, or fishing for 
trout in some stream two or three miles distant. No- 
body can stir far from camp without a guide. Ham- 
mocks are swung, bowers are built, novel-reading be- 
gins, worsted work appears, cards are shuffled and 
dealt. The day passes in absolute freedom from re- 
sponsibility to one's self. At night, when the expedi- 
tions return, the camp resumes its animation. Adven- 
tures are recounted, every statement of the narrator 
being disputed and argued. Everybody has become 
an adept in wood-craft ; but nobody credits his neigh- 
bor with like instinct. Society getting resolved into 
its elements, confidence is gone. 

Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop or 
two of rain falls. The head guide is appealed to. Is 
it going to rain ? He says it does rain. But will it 
be a rainy night ? The guide goes down to the lake, 
looks at the sky, and concludes that if the wind shifts 
a p'int more, there is no telling what sort of weather 
we shall have. Meantime the drops patter thicker on 
the leaves overhead, and the leaves, in turn, pass the 
water down to the table; the sky darkens; the wind 
rises ; there is a kind of shiver in the woods ; and we 
scud away into the shanty, taking the remains of our 
supper, and eating it as best we can. The rain in= 
creases. The fire sputters and fumes. All the trees 
are dripping, dripping, and the ground is wet. We 
cannot step out-doors without getting a drenching. 
Like sheep, we are penned in the little hut, where no 
one can stand erect. The rain swirls into the open 
front, and wets the bottom of the blankets. The 



86 CAMPING OUT 

smoke drives in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. 
The guides at length conclude that it is going to be 
damp. The dismal situation sets us all into good 
spirits ; and it is later than the night before when we 
crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a sound 
sleep, lulled by the storm and the rain resounding on 
the bark roof. How much better off we are than 
many a shelterless wretch ! We are as snug as dry 
herrings. At the moment, however, of dropping off 
to sleep, somebody unfortunately notes a drop of wa- 
ter on his face ; this is followed by another drop ; in 
an instant a stream is established. He moves his 
head to a dry place. Scarcely has he done so, when 
he feels a dampness in his back. Reaching his hand 
outside, he finds a puddle of water soaking through 
his blanket. By this time, somebody inquires if it is 
possible that the roof leaks. One man has a stream 
of water under him ; another says it is coming into 
his ear. The roof appears to be a discriminating 
sieve. Those who are dry see no need of such a fuss. 
The man in the corner spreads his umbrella, and the 
protective measure is resented by his neighbor. In 
the darkness there is recrimination. One of the 
guides, who is summoned, suggests that the rubber 
blankets be passed out, and spread over the roof. The 
inmates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower- 
bath is no worse than a tub-bath. The rain continues 
to soak down. The fire is only half alive. The bed- 
ding is damp. Some sit up, if they can find a dry 
spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are 
made. A few sleep. And the night wears on. The 
morning opens cheerless. The sky is still leaking, 
and so is the shanty. The guides bring in a half^ 
cooked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There 



CAMPING OUT 87 

are reviving signs of breaking away, delusive signs 
that create momentary exhilaration. Even if the 
storm clears, the woods are soaked. There is no 
chance of stirring. The world is only ten feet square. 

This life, without responsibility or clean clothes^ 
may continue as long as the reader desires. There 
are those who would like to live in this free fashion 
forever, taking rain and sun as heaven pleases ; and 
there are some souls so constituted that they cannot 
exist more than three days without their worldly bag- 
gage. Taking the party altogether, from one cause 
or another it is likely to strike camp sooner than was 
intended. And the stricken camp is a melancholy 
sight. The woods have been despoiled ; the stumps 
are ugly ; the bushes are scorched ; the pine-leaf-strewn 
earth is trodden into mire ; the landing looks like a 
cattle-ford ; the ground is littered with all the un- 
sightly debris of a hand-to-hand life ; the dismantled 
shanty is a shabby object ; the charred and blackened 
logs, where the fire blazed, suggest the extinction of 
family life. Man has wrought his usual wrong upon 
Nature, and he can save his self-respect only by mov- 
ing to virgin forests. 

And move to them he will, the next season, if not 
this. For he who has once experienced the fascina- 
tion of the woods-life never escapes its enticement : in 
the. memory nothing remains but its charm. 



\ 



A WILDERNESS EOMAXCE 



At the south end of Keene Valley, in the Adiron- 
dacks, stands Noon Mark, a shapely peak, thirty-five 
hundred feet above the sea, which, with the aid of the 
sun, tells the Keene people when it is time to eat din- 
ner. From its summit you look south into a vast wil- 
derness basin, a great stretch of forest little trodden, 
and out of whose bosom you can hear from the 
heights on a still day the loud murmur of Boqtret. 
This basin of unbroken green rises away to the south 
and south-east into the rocky heights of Dix's Peak 
and Nipple Top, — the latter a local name which 
neither the mountain nor the fastidious tourist is able 
to shake off. Indeed, so long as the mountain keeps 
its present shape as seen from the southern lowlands, 
it cannot get on without this name. 

These two mountains, which belong to the great 
system of which Marcy is the giant centre, and are in 
the neighborhood of five thousand feet high, on the 
southern outposts of the great mountains, form the 
gate-posts of the pass into the south country. This 
opening between them is called Hunter's Pass. It is 
the most elevated and one of the wildest of the moun- 
tain passes. Its summit is thirty-five hundred feet 
high. In former years it is presumed the hunters oc- 
casionally followed the game through ; but latterly it 
is rare to find a guide who has been that way, and the 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 89 

tin-can and paper-collar tourists have not yet made it 
a runway. This seclusion is due not to any inherent 
difficulty of travel, but to the fact that it lies a little 
out of the way. 

We went through it last summer ; making our way 
into the jaws from the foot of the great slides on Dix, 
keeping along the ragged spurs of the mountain 
through the virgin forest. The pass is narrow, walled 
in on each side by precipices of granite, and blocked 
up with the bowlders and fallen trees, and beset with 
pitfalls in the roads ingeniously covered with fair- 
seeming moss. When the climber occasionally loses 
sight of a leg in one of those treacherous holes, and 
feels a cold sensation in his foot, he learns that he has 
dipped into the sources of the Boquet, which emerges 
lower down into falls and rapids, and, recruited by 
creeping tributaries, goes brawling through the forest 
basin, and at last comes out an amiable and boat-bear- 
ing stream in the valley of Elizabeth Town. From 
the summit another rivulet trickles away to the south, 
and finds its way through a frightful tamarack swamp, 
and through woods scarred by ruthless lumbering, to 
Mud Pond, a quiet body of water, with a ghastly 
fringe of dead trees, upon which people of grand in- 
tentions and weak vocabulary are trying to fix the 
name of Elk Lake. The descent of the pass on that 
side is precipitous and exciting. The way is in the 
stream itself ; and a considerable portion of the dis- 
tance we swung ourselves down the faces of consider- 
able falls, and tumbled down cascades. The descent, 
however, was made easy by the fact that it rained, 
and every footstep was yielding and slippery. Why 
sane people, often church-members respectably con- 
nected, will subject themselves to this sort of treat- 



90 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 

ment, — be wet to the skin, bruised by the rocks, and 
flung about among the bushes and dead wood until 
the most necessary part of their apparel hangs in 
shreds, — is one of the delightful mysteries of these 
woods. I suspect that every man is at heart a rov= 
ing animal, and likes, at intervals, to revert to the 
condition of the bear and the catamount. 

There is no trail through Hunter's Pass, which, as 
I have intimated, is the least frequented portion of 
this wilderness. Yet we were surprised to find a 
well-beaten path a considerable portion of the way 
and wherever a path is possible. It was not a mere 
deer's runway : these are found everywhere in the 
mountains. It is trodden by other and larger ani- 
mals, and is, no doubt, the highway of beasts. It 
bears marks of having been so for a long period, and 
probably a period long ago. Large animals are not 
common in these woods now, and you seldom meet 
any thing fiercer than the timid deer and the gentle 
bear. But in days gone by Hunter's Pass was the 
highway of the whole caravan of animals who were 
continually going backwards and forwards, in the 
aimless, roaming way that beasts have, between Mud 
Pond and the Boquet Basin. I think I can see now 
the procession of them between the heights of Dix and 
Nipple Top ; the elk and the moose shambling along, 
cropping the twigs ; the heavy bear lounging by with 
his exploring nose ; the frightened deer trembling at 
every twig that snapped beneath his little hoofs, in- 
tent on the lily-pads of the pond ; the raccoon and the 
hedgehog, sidling along ; and the velvet-footed pan- 
ther, insouciant and conscienceless, scenting the path 
with a curious glow in his eye, or crouching in an 
overhanging tree ready to drop into the procession at 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 91 

the right moment. Night and day, year after year, 
I see them going by, watched by the red fox and the 
comfortably clad sable, and grinned at by the black 
cat, — the innocent, the vicious, the timid and the 
savage, the shy and the bold, the chattering slanderer 
and the screaming prowler, the industrious and the 
peaceful, the tree-top critic and the crawling biter, — 
just as it is elsewhere. It makes me blush for my 
species when I think of it. This charming society is 
nearly extinct now : of the larger animals there only 
remain the bear, who minds his own business more 
thoroughly than any person I know, and the deer, 
who would like to be friendly with men, but whose 
winning face and gentle ways are no protection from 
the savageness of man, and who is treated with the 
same unpitying destruction as the snarling catamount. 
I have read in history that the amiable natives of 
Hispaniola fared no better at the hands of the brutal 
Spaniards than the fierce and warlike Caribs. As so- 
ciety is at present constituted in Christian countries, 
I would rather for my own security be a cougar than 
a fawn. 

There is not much of romantic interest in the Adi- 
rondacks. Out of the books of daring travellers, 
nothing. I do not know that the Keene Valley has 
any history. The mountains always stood here, and 
the Ausable, flowing now in shallows and now in rip- 
pling reaches over the sands and pebbles, has for ages 
filled the air with continuous and soothing sounds. 
Before the Vermonters broke into it some three-quar- 
ters of a century ago, and made meadows of its bot- 
toms and sugar-camps of its fringing woods, I sup- 
pose the red Indian lived here in his usual discom- 
fort, and was as restless as his successors, the summer 



92 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 

boarders. But the streams were full of trout then, 
and the moose and the elk left their broad tracks on 
the sands of the river. But of the Indian there is no 
trace. There is a mound in the valley, much like 
a Tel in the country of Bashan beyond the Jordan, 
that may have been built by some prehistoric race, 
and may contain treasure and the seated figure of 
a preserved chieftain on his slow way to Paradise. 
What the gentle and accomplished race of the Mound- 
Builders should want in this savage region, where the 
frost hills the early potatoes and stunts the scanty 
oats, I do not know. I have seen no trace of therriy 
except this Tel, and one other slight relic, which came 
to light last summer, and is not enough to found the 
history of a race upon. 

Some workingmen, getting stone from the hillside 
on one of the little plateaus for a house-cellar, discov- 
ered, partly embedded, a piece of pottery unique in 
this region. With the unerring instinct of workmen 
in regard to antiquities, they thrust a crowbar through 
it, and broke the bowl into several pieces. The joint 
fragments, however, give us the form of a dish. It 
is a bowl about nine inches high and eight inches 
across, made of red clay, baked but not glazed. The 
bottom is round, the top flares into four corners, and 
the rim is rudely but rather artistically ornamented 
with criss-cross scratches made when the clay was 
soft. The vessel is made of clay not found about 
here, and it is one that the Indians formerly living 
here could not form. Was it brought here by rov- 
ing Indians who may have made an expedition to 
the Ohio ; was it passed from tribe to tribe ; or did it 
belong to a race that occupied the country before the 
Indian, and who have left traces of their civilized 
skill in pottery scattered all over the continent ? 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 93 

If I could establish the fact that this jar was made 
by a prehistoric race, we should then have four gen- 
erations in this lovely valley: the amiable Prehis- 
toric people (whose gentle descendants were probably 
killed by the Spaniards in the West Indies) ; the Red 
Indians ; the Keene Flaters (from Vermont) ; and 
the Summer Boarders, to say nothing of the various 
races of animals who have been unable to live here 
since the advent of the Summer Boarders, the valley 
being not productive enough to sustain both. This 
last incursion has been more destructive to the noble 
serenity of the forest than all the preceding. 

But we are wandering from Hunter's Pass. The 
western walls of it are formed by the precipices of 
Nipple Top, not so striking nor so bare as the great 
slides of Dix, which glisten in the sun like silver, but 
rough and repelling, and consequently alluring. I 
have a great desire to scale them. I have always had 
an unreasonable wish to explore the rough summit of 
this crabbed hill, which is too broken and jagged for 
pleasure, and not high enough for glory. This desire 
was stimulated by a legend related by our guide that 
night in the Mud Pond cabin. The guide had nevei- 
been through the pass before ; although he was famil- 
iar with the region, and had ascended Nipple Top in 
the winter in pursuit of the sable. The story he told 
does n't amount to much, — none of the guides' stories 
do, faithfully reported, — and I should not have be- 
lieved it if I had not had a good deal of leisure on my 
hands at the time, and been of a willing mind, and 
I may say in rather a starved condition as to any 
romance in this region. 

The guide said then — and he mentioned it casu- 
ally, in reply to our inquiries about ascending the 



94 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 

mountain — that there was a cave high up among the 
precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. He 
scarcely volunteered the information, and with seem- 
ing reluctance gave us any particulars about it. I 
always admire this art by which the accomplished 
story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant tale of 
the marvellous from him, and makes you in a manner 
responsible for its improbability. If this is well-man- 
aged, the listener is always eager to believe a great 
deal more than the romancer seems willing to tell, 
and always resents the assumed reservations and 
doubts of the latter. 

There were strange reports about this cave when 
the old guide was a boy, and even then its very exist- 
ence had become legendary. Nobody knew exactly 
where it was, but there was no doubt that it had been 
inhabited. Hunters in the forests south of Dix had 
seen a light late at night twinkling through the trees 
high up the mountain, and now and then a ruddy glare 
as from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlers were few 
in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were 
well known. If the cave was inhabited, it must be by 
strangers, and by men who had some secret purpose 
in seeking this seclusion and eluding observation. If 
suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, or 
if any such landed from the steamers on the shore of 
Lake Champlain, it was impossible to identify them 
with these invaders who were never seen. Their not 
being seen did not, however, prevent the growth of 
the belief in their existence. Little indications and 
rumors, each trivial in itself, became a mass of testi- 
mony that could not be disposed of because of its 
very indefiniteness, but which appealed strongly to 
man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity. 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 95 

The cave existed ; and it was inhabited by men 
who came and went on mysterious errands, and trans- 
acted their business by night. What this band of 
adventurers or desperadoes lived on, how they con= 
veyed their food through the trackless woods to their 
high eyrie, and what could induce men to seek such 
a retreat, were questions discussed, but never settled. 
They might be banditti ; but there was nothing to 
plunder in these savage wilds, and, in fact, robberies 
and raids, either in the settlements of the hills or the 
distant lake shores were unknown. In another age, 
these might have been hermits, holy men who had 
retired from the world to feed the vanity of their god- 
liness in a spot where they were subject neither to 
interruption nor comparison; they would have had 
a shrine in the cave, and an image of the Blessed Vir- 
gin, with a lamp always burning before it and send- 
ing out its mellow light over the savage waste. A 
more probable notion was that they were romantic 
Frenchmen who had grown weary of vice and refine- 
ment together, — possibly princes, expectants of the 
throne, Bourbon remainders, named Williams or oth- 
erwise, unhatched eggs, so to speak, of kings, who had 
withdrav/n out of observation to wait for the next 
turn-over in Paris. Frenchmen do such things. If 
they were not Frenchmen, they might be horse-thieves 
or criminals, escaped from justice or from the friendly 
state-prison of New York. This last supposition was, 
however, more violent than the others, or seems so to 
us in this day of grace. For what well-brought-up 
New York criminal would be so insane as to run away 
from his political friends the keepers, from the easily- 
had companionship of his pals outside, and from the 
society of his criminal lawyer, and, in short, to put 



96 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 

himself into the depths of a wilderness out of which 
escape, when escape was desired, is a good deal more 
difficult than it is out of the swarming* jails of the 
Empire State ? Besides, how foolish for a man, if he 
were a really hardened and professional criminal, hav- 
ing established connections and a regular business, to 
run away from the governor's pardon, which might 
have difficulty in finding him in the craggy bosom of 
Nipple Top ! 

This gang of men — there is some doubt whether 
they were accompanied by women — gave little evi- 
dence in their appearance of being escaped criminals 
or expectant kings. Their movements were myste^ 
rious, but not necessarily violent. If their occupation 
could have been discovered, that would have furnished 
a clue to their true character. But about this the 
strangers were as close as mice. If anything could 
betray them, it was the steady light from the cavern, 
and its occasional ruddy flashing. This gave rise to 
the opinion, which was strengthened by a good many 
indications equally conclusive, that the cave was the 
resort of a gang of coiners and counterfeiters. Here 
they had their furnace, smelting-pots, and dies ; here 
they manufactured those spurious quarters and halves 
that their confidants, who were pardoned, were circu- 
lating, and which a few honest men were *' nailing to 
the counter." 

This prosaic explanation of a romantic situation 
satisfies all the requirements of the known facts, but 
the lively imagination at once rejects it as unworthy 
of the subject. I think the guide put it forward in 
order to have it rejected. The fact is, — at least, it 
has never been disproved, — these strangers whose 
movements were veiled belonged to that dark and 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 97 

mysterious race whose presence anywhere on this con- 
tinent is a nest-egg of romance or of terror. They 
were Spaniards ! You need not say buccaneers, you 
need not say gold-hunters, you need not say swarthy 
adventurers even : it is enough to say Spaniards I 
There is no tale of mystery and fanaticism and daring 
I would not believe if a Spaniard is the hero of it, 
and it is not necessary either that he should have the 
high-sounding name of Bobadilla or Ojeda. 

Nobody, I suppose, would doubt this story, if the 
cave were in the mountains of Ilispaniola or in the 
Florida Keys. But a Spaniard in the Adirondacks 
does seem misplaced. Well, there w^ould be no ro- 
mance about it if he were not misplaced. The Span- 
iard, anyw^here out of Spain, has always been mis- 
placed. What could draw him to this loggy and re- 
mote region? There are two substances that will 
draw a Spaniard from any distance as certainly as 
sugar will draw wasps, — gold and silver. Does the 
reader begin to see light ? There was a rumor that 
silver existed in these mountains. I do not know 
where the rumor came from, but it is necessary to 
account for the Spaniards in the cave. 

How long these greedy Spaniards occupied the cave 
on Nipple Top is not known, nor how much silver 
they found, whether they found any, or whether they 
secretly took away all there was in the hills. That 
they discovered silver in considerable quantities is a 
fair inference from the length of their residence in 
this mountain, and the extreme care they took to 
guard their secret, and the mystery that enveloped all 
their movements. What they mined, they smelted 
in the cave and carried off with them. 

To my imagination nothing is more impressive than 



98 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 

the presence in these savage wilds of these polished 
foreigners and accomplished metallurgists, far from 
the haunts of civilized man, leading a life of luxury 
and revelry in this almost inaccessible cavern. I can 
see them seated about their roaring fire, which re- 
vealed the rocky ribs of their den and sent a gleam 
over the dark forest, eating venison-pasty and cutting 
deep into the juicy haunch of the moose, quaffing deep 
draughts of red wine from silver tankards, and then 
throwing themselves back upon divans, and lazily puff- 
ing the fragrant Havana. After a day of toil, what 
more natural, and what more probable for a Spaniard? 
Does the reader think these inferences not war- 
ranted by the facts ? He does not know the facts. 
It is true that our guide had never himself personally 
visited the cave, but he has always intended to hunt 
it up. His information in regard to it comes from 
his father, who was a mighty hunter and trapper. 
In one of his expeditions over Nipple Top, he chanced 
upon the cave. The mouth was half concealed by 
undergrowth. He entered, not without some appre- 
hension engendered by the legends which make it fa- 
mous. I think he showed some boldness in venturing 
into such a place alone. I confess, that, before I went 
in, I should want to fire a Gatling gun into the mouth 
for a little while, in order to rout out the bears which 
usually dwell there. He went in, however. The en- 
trance was low ; but the cave was spacious, not large, 
but big enough, with a level floor and a vaulted ceil- 
ing. It had long been deserted, but that it was once 
the residence of highly civilized beings there could be 
no doubt. The dead brands in the centre were the 
remains of a fire that could not have been kindled by 
wild beasts, and the bones scattered about had been 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 99 

scientifically dissected and handled. There were also 
remnants of furniture and pieces of garments scat- 
tered about. At the further end, in a fissure of the 
rock, were stones regularly built up, the remains of a 
larger fire, — and what the hunter did not doubt was 
the smelting-fumace of the Spaniards. He poked 
about in the ashes, but found no silver. That had 
all been carried away. 

But what most provoked his wonder in this rude 
cave was a chair ! This was not such a seat as a 
woodman might knock up with an axe, with a rough 
body and a seat of woven splits, but a manufactured 
chair of commerce, and a chair, too, of an unusual 
pattern and some elegance. This chair itself was a 
mute witness of luxury and mystery. The chair it- 
self might have been accounted for, though I don't 
know how : but upon the back of the chair hung, as 
if the owner had carelessly flung it there before going 
out an hour before, a man's waistcoat. This waistcoat 
seemed to him of foreign make and peculiar style, 
but what endeared it to him was its row of metal but- 
tons. These buttons were of silver ! I forget now 
whether he did not say they were of silver coin, and 
that the coin was Spanish. But I am not certain 
about this latter fact, and I wish to cast no air of im- 
probability over my narrative. This rich vestment 
the hunter carried away with him. This was all the 
plunder his expedition afforded. Yes: there was 
one other article, and, to my mind, more significant 
than the vest of the hidalgo. That was a short and 
stout crowbar of iron ; not one of the long crowbars 
that farmers use to pry up stones, but a short handy 
one, such as you would use in digging silver-ore out 
of the cracks of rocks. 



100 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 

This was the guide's simple story. I asked him 
what became of the vest and buttons, and the bar of 
iron. The old man wore the vest until he wore it 
out ; and then he handed it over to the boys, and they 
wore it in turn till they wore it out. The buttons 
were cut off, and kept as curiosities. They were 
about the cabin, and the children had them to play 
with. The guide distinctly remembers playing with 
them ; one of them he kept for a long time, and he 
did n't know but he could find it now, but he guessed 
it had disappeared. I regretted that he had not treas- 
ured this slender verification of an interesting ro- 
mance, but he said in those days he never paid much 
attention to such things. Lately he has turned the 
subject over, a. 1 sorry that his father wore out the 
vest and did n^ bring away the chair. It is his 
steady purpose to find the cave some time when he 
has leisure, and capture the chair, if it has not tum- 
bled to pieces. But about the crowbar ? Oh ! that is 
all right. The guide has the bar at his house in 
Keene Valley, and has always used it. 

I am happy to be able to confirm this story by say- 
ing that next day I saw the crowbar, and had it in 
my hand. It is short and thick, and the most inter- 
esting kind of crowbar. This evidence is enough for 
me. I intend in the course of this vacation to search 
for the cave ; and, if I find it, my readers shall know 
the truth about it, if it destroys the only bit of ro- 
mance connected with these mountains. 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 



My readers were promised an account o£ Span- 
iard's Cave on Nipple-Top Mountain in the Adiron- 
dacks, if sucli a cave exists, and could be found. 
There is none but negative evidence that this is a 
mere cave of the imagination, the void fancy of a va- 
cant hour ; but it is the duty of the historian to pre- 
sent the negative testimony of a fruitless expedition 
in search of it, made last summer. I beg leave to 
offer this in the simple language befitting all sincere 
exploits of a geographical character. 

The summit of Nipple-Top Mountain has been 
trodden by few white men of good character : it is in 
the heart of a hirsute wilderness ; it is itself a rough 
and unsocial pile of granite nearly five thousand feet 
high, bristling with a stunted and unpleasant growth 
of firs and balsams, and there is no earthly reason 
why a person should go there. Therefore we went. 
In the party of three there was, of course, a chaplain. 
The guide was Old Mountain Phelps, who had made 
the ascent once before, but not from the northwest 
side, the direction from which we approached it. The 
enthusiasm of this philosopher has grown with his 
years, and outlived his endurance : we carried our 
own knapsacks and supplies, therefore, and drew upon 
him for nothing but moral reflections and a general 
knowledge of the wilderness. Our first day's route 



102 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 

was through the Gill-Brook woods and up one o£ its 
branches to the head of Caribou Pass, which sepa- 
rates Nipple-Top from Colvin. 

It was about the first of September ; no rain had 
fallen for several weeks, and this heart of the forest 
was as dry as tinder ; a lighted match dropped any- 
where would start a conflagration. This dryness has 
its advantages : the walking is improved ; the long 
heat has expressed all the spicy odors of the cedars 
and balsams, and the woods are filled with a soothing 
fragrance ; the waters of the streams, though scant 
and clear, are cold as ice ; the common forest chill is 
gone from the air. The afternoon was bright ; there 
was a feeling of exultation and adventure in stepping 
off into the open but pathless forest ; the great stems 
of deciduous trees were mottled with patches of sun- 
light, which brought out upon the variegated barks 
and mosses of the old trunks a thousand shifting hues. 
There is nothing like a primeval wood for color on a 
sunny day. The shades of green and brown are in- 
finite ; the dull red of the hemlock bark glows in the 
sun, the russet of the changing moose-bush becomes 
brilliant ; there are silvery openings here and there ; 
and everywhere the columns rise up to the canopy of 
tender green which supports the intense blue sky and 
holds up a part of it from falling through in frag- 
ments to the floor of the forest. Decorators can learn 
here how Nature dares to put blue and green in juxta- 
position : she has evidently the secret of harmonizing 
all the colors. 

The way, as we ascended, was not all through open 
woods ; dense masses of firs were encountered, jagged 
spurs were to be crossed, and the going became at 
length so slow and toilsome that we took to the rocky 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 103 

bed of a stream, where bowlders and flumes and cas- 
cades offered us sufficient variety. The deeper we 
penetrated, the greater the sense of savageness and 
solitude ; in the silence of these hidden places one 
seems to approach the beginning of things. AVe 
emerged from the defile into an open basin, formed 
by the curved side of the mountain, and stood silent 
before a waterfall coming down out of the sky in the 
centre of the curve. I do not know anything exactly 
like this fall, which some poetical explorer has named 
the Fairy-Ladder Falls. It appears to have a height 
of something like a hundred and fifty feet, and the 
water falls obliquely across the face of the cliff from 
left to right in short steps, which in the moonlight 
might seem like a veritable ladder for fairies. Our 
impression of its height was confirmed by climbing 
the very steep slope at its side some three or four 
hundred feet. At the top we found the stream flow, 
ing over a broad bed of rock, like a street in the wil- 
derness, slanting up still towards the sky, and bor- 
dered by low firs and balsams, and bowlders com- 
pletely covered with moss. It was above the world 
and open to the sky. 

On account of the tindery condition of the woods 
we made our fire on the natural pavement, and se- 
lected a smooth place for our bed near by on a flat 
rock, with a pool of limpid water at the foot. This 
granite couch we covered with the dry and springy 
moss, which we stripped off in hesivj fleeces a foot 
thick from the bowlders. First, however, we fed 
upon the fruit that was offered us. Over these hills 
of moss ran an exquisite vine with a tiny, ovate, green 
leaf, bearing small, delicate berries, oblong and white 
as wax, having a faint flavor of wintergreen and the 



104 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 

sKglitest acid taste, the very essence of the wilder- 
ness ; fairy food, no doubt, and too refined for pal- 
ates accustomed to coarser viands. There must ex- 
ist somewhere sinless women who could eat these ber- 
ries without being reminded of the lost purity and 
delicacy of the primeval senses. Every year I doubt 
not this stainless berry ripens here, and is unplucked 
by any knight of the Holy Grail who is worthy to eat 
it, and keeps alive, in the prodigality of nature, the 
tradition of the unperverted conditions of taste before 
the fall. We ate these berries, I am bound to say, 
with a sense of guilty enjoyment, as if they had been 
a sort of shew-bread of the wilderness, though I can- 
not answer for the chaplain, who is by virtue of his 
office a little nearer to these mysteries of nature than 
I. This plant belongs to the heath family, and is first 
cousin to the blueberry and cranberry. It is com- 
monly called the creeping snowberry, but I like better 
its official title of chiogenes, — the snow-born. 

Our mossy resting-place was named the Bridal 
Chamber Camp, in the enthusiasm of the hour, after 
darkness fell upon the woods and the stars came out. 
AYe were two thousand five hundred feet above the 
common world. We lay, as it were, on a shelf in the 
sky, with a basin of illimitable forests below us and 
dim mountain-passes in the far horizon. 

And as we lay there courting sleep which the blink- 
ing stars refused to shower down, our philosopher dis- 
coursed to us of the principle of fire, which he holds, 
with the ancients, to be an independent element that 
comes and goes in a mysterious manner, as we see 
flame spring up and vanish, and is in some way vital 
and indestructible, and has a mysterious relation to 
the source of all things. " That flame," he says, 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 105 

"you have put out, but where has it gone?" We 
could not say, nor whether it is anything like the 
spirit of a man which is here for a little hour, and 
then vanishes away. Our own philosophy of the cor- 
relation of forces found no sort of favor at that eleva- 
tion, and we went to sleep leaving the principle of fire 
in the apostolic category of " any other creature." 

At daylight we were astir, and having pressed the 
principle of fire into our service to make a pot of tea, 
we carefully extinguished it or sent it into another 
place, and addressed ourselves to the climb of some- 
thing over two thousand feet. The arduous labor of 
scaling an Alpine peak has 'a compensating glory; 
but the dead lift of our bodies up Nipple-Top had no 
stimulus of this sort. It is simply hard work, for 
which the strained muscles only get the approbation 
of the individual conscience that drives them to the 
task. The pleasure of such an ascent is difficult to 
explain on the spot, and I suspect consists not so 
much in positive enjoyment as in the delight the 
mind experiences in tyrannizing over the body. I do 
not object to the elevation of this mountain, nor to the 
uncommonly steep grade by which it attains it, but 
only to the other obstacles thrown in the way of the 
climber. All the slopes of Nipple-Top are hirsute 
and jagged to the last degree. Granite ledges inter- 
pose ; granite bowlders seem to have been dumped 
over the sides with no more attempt at arrangement 
than in a rip-rap wall ; the slashes and windfalls of a 
century present here and there an almost impenetra- 
ble chevalier des arhres ; and the steep sides bristle 
with a mass of thick balsams, with dead, protruding 
spikes, as unyielding as iron stakes. The mountain 
has had its own way forever, and is as untamed as a 



106 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 

wolf ; or rather the elements, the frightful tempests, 
the frosts, the heavy snows, the coaxing sun, and the 
avalanches have had their way with it until its surface 
is in hopeless confusion. We made our way very 
slowly ; and it was ten o'clock before we reached what 
appeared to be the summit, a ridge deeply covered 
with moss, low balsams, and blueberry bushes. 

I say, appeared to be ; for we stood in thick fog or 
in the heart of clouds which limited our dim view to a 
radius of twenty feet. It was a warm and cheerful 
fog, stirred by little wind, but moving, shifting, and 
boiling as by its own volatile nature, rolling up black 
from below and dancing in silvery splendor overhead. 
As a fog it could not have been improved ; as a me- 
dium for viewing the landscape it was a failure ; and 
we lay down upon the Sybarite couch of moss, as in a 
Russian bath, to await revelations. 

We waited two hours without change, except an oc- 
casional hopeful lightness in the fog above, and at 
last the appearance for a moment of the spectral 
sun. Only for an instant was this luminous promise 
vouchsafed. But we watched in intense excitement. 
There it was again ; and this time the fog was so 
thin overhead that we caught sight of a patch of blue 
sky a yard square, across which the curtain was in- 
stantly drawn. A little wind was stirring, and the 
fog boiled up from the valley caldrons thicker than 
ever. But the spell was broken. In a moment more 
Old Phelps was shouting, " The sun ! " and before 
we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky over- 
head as big as a farm. '' See ! quick ! " The old 
man was dancing like a lunatic. There was a rift in 
the vapor at our feet, down, down, three thousand feet 
into the forest abyss, and lo ! lifting out of it yonder 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 107 

the tawny side of Dix, — the vision of a second, 
snatched away in the rolling fog. The play had just 
begun. Before we could turn, there was the gorge of 
Caribou Pass, savage and dark, visible to the bottom. 
The opening shut as suddenly ; and then, looking 
over the clouds, miles away we saw the peaceful farms 
of the Ausable Valley, and in a moment more the 
plateau of Xorth Elba and the sentinel mountains 
about the grave of John Brown. These glimpses 
were as fleeting as thought, and instantly we w^ere 
again isolated in the sea of mist. The expectation of 
these sudden strokes of sublimity kept us exultingly 
on the alert ; and yet it was a blow of surprise when 
the curtain was swiftly withdrawn on the west, and 
the lonof rido:e of Colvin, seemin^^lv ^"ithin a stone's 
throw, heaved up like an island out of the ocean, and 
was the next moment ino'ulfed. We waited lono-er 
for Dix to show its shapely peak and its glistening 
sides of rock o;ashed bv avalanches. The fantastic 
clouds, torn and streaming, hurried uj) from the south 
in haste, as if to a witch's rendezvous, hiding and dis- 
closing the great summit in their flight. The mist 
boiled up from the valley, whirled over the summit 
where we stood, and plunged again into the depths. 
Objects were forming and disappearing, shifting and 
dancing, now in sun and now gone in fog, and in the 
elemental whirl we felt that we were " assistino; " in 
an original process of creation. The sun strove, and 
his very striving called up new vapors ; the wind 
rent away the clouds, and brought new masses to 
surge about us ; and the spectacles to right and left, 
above and below, changed with incredible swiftness. 
Such o'lorv of abvss and summit, of color and form 
and transformation, is seldom granted to mortal eyes. 



108 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 

For an hour we watched it until our vast mountain 
was revealed in all its bulk, its long spurs, its abysses 
and its savagery, and the great basins of wilderness 
with their shining lakes, and the giant peaks of the 
region, were one by one disclosed, and hidden and 
again tranquil in the sunshine. 

Where was the cave? There was ample surface in 
which to look for it. If we could have flitted about, 
like the hawks that came circling round, over the 
steep slopes, the long spurs, the jagged precipices, I 
have no doubt we should have found it. But moving 
about on this mountain is not a holiday pastime ; and 
we were chiefly anxious to discover a practicable mode 
of descent into the great wilderness basin on the 
south, which we must traverse that afternoon before 
reaching the hospitable shanty on Mud Pond. It was 
enough for us to have discovered the general where- 
abouts of the Spanish Cave, and we left the fixing of 
its exact position to future explorers. 

The spur we chose for our escape looked smooth in 
the distance ; but we found it bristling with obstruc- 
tions, dead balsams set thickly together, slashes of 
fallen timber, and every manner of woody chaos ; and 
when at length we swung and tumbled off the ledge 
to the general slope, we exchanged only for more dis- 
agreeable going. The slope for a couple of thousand 
feet was steep enough ; but it was formed of granite 
rocks all moss-covered, so that the footing could not 
be determined, and at short intervals we nearly went 
out of sight in holes under the treacherous carpeting. 
Add to this that stems of great trees were laid longi- 
tudinally and transversely and criss-cross over and 
among the rocks, and the reader can see that a good 
deal of work needs to be done to make this a practi- 
cable highway for anything but a squirrel. 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 109 

We had had no water since our daylight breakfast *, 
our lunch on the mountain had been moistened only 
by the fog. Our thirst began to be that of Tantalus, 
because we could hear the water running deep down 
among the rocks, but we could not come at it. The 
imagination drank the living stream, and we realized 
anew what delusive food the imagination furnishes in 
an actual strait. A good deal of the crime of this 
world, I am convinced, is the direct result of the un- 
licensed play of the imagination in adverse circum- 
stances. This reflection had nothing to do with our 
actual situation ; for we added to our imagination 
patience, and to our patience long-suffering, and prob- 
ably all the Christian virtues would have been devel- 
oped in us if the descent had been long enough. 
Before we reached the bottom of Caribou Pass, the 
w^ater burst out from the rocks in a clear stream that 
was as cold as ice. Shortly after, we struck the roar- 
ing brook that issues from the Pass to the south. It 
is a stream full of character, not navigable even for 
trout in the upper part, but a succession of falls, cas- 
cades, flumes, and pools, that would delight an artist. 
It is not an easy bed for anything except water to de- 
scend ; and before we reached the level reaches, where 
the stream flows with a murmurous noise through 
open woods, one of our party began to show signs of 
exhaustion. 

This was Old Phelps, whose appetite had failed the 
day before, — his imagination being in better working 
order than his stomach : he had eaten little that day, 
and his legs became so groggy that he was obliged to 
rest at short intervals. Here was a situation ! The 
afternoon was wearing away. We had six or seven 
miles of unknown wilderness to traverse, a portion of 



110 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 

it swampy, in which a progress of more than a mile 
an hour is difficult, and the condition of the guide 
compelled even a slower march. What should we do 
in that lonesome solitude if the guide became dis» 
abled ? We could n't carry him out ; could we find 
our own way out to get assistance ? The guide him- 
self had never been there before ; and although he 
knew the general direction of our point of egress, and 
was entirely adequate to extricate himself from any 
position in the woods, his knowledge was of that occult 
sort possessed by woodsmen which it is impossible to 
communicate. Our object was to strike a trail that 
led from the Au Sable Pond, the other side of the 
mountain range, to an inlet on Mud Pond. We knew 
that if we travelled southwestward far enough we 
must strike that trail, but how far ? No one could tell. 
If we reached that trail, and found a boat at the inlet, 
there would be only a row of a couple of miles to the 
house at the foot of the lake. If no boat was there, 
then we must circle the lake three or four miles far- 
ther through a cedar-swamp, with no trail in partic- 
ular. The prospect was not pleasing. We were short 
of supplies, for we had not expected to pass that 
night in the woods. The pleasure of the excursion 
began to develop itself. 

We stumbled on in the general direction marked 
out, through a forest that began to seem endless as 
hour after hour passed, compelled as we were to make 
long detours over the ridges of the foot-hills to avoid 
the swamp, which sent out from the border of the lake 
long tongues into the firm ground. The guide became 
more ill at every step, and needed frequent halts and 
long rests. Food he could not eat ; and tea, water, 
and even brandy, he rejected. Again and again the 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 111 

old philosopher, enfeebled by excessive exertion and 
illness, would collapse in a heap on the ground, an 
almost comical picture of despair, while we stood and 
waited the waning of the day, and peered forward in 
vain for any sign of an open country. At every brook 
we encountered, we suggested a halt for the night, 
while it was still light enough to select a camping- 
place, but the plucky old man would n't hear of it i 
the trail might be only a quarter of a mile ahead, and 
we crawled on again at a snail's pace. His honor as 
a guide seemed to be at stake ; and, besides, he con- 
fessed to a notion that his end was near, and he did n't 
want to die like a dog in the woods. And yet, if this 
was his last journey, it seemed not an inappropriate 
ending for the old woodsman to lie down and give up 
the ghost in the midst of the untamed forest and the 
solemn silences he felt most at home in. There is a 
popular theory, held by civilians, that a soldier likes 
to die in battle. I suppose it is as true that a woods- 
man would like to " pass in his chips," — the figure 
seems to be inevitable, — struck down by illness and 
exposures in the forest solitude, with heaven in sight 
and a tree-root for his pillow. 

The guide seemed really to fear that, if we did not 
get out of the woods that night, he would never go 
out ; and, yielding to his dogged resolution, we kept 
on in search of the trail, although the gathering of 
dusk over the ground warned us that we might easily 
cross the trail without recognizing it. AYe were trav= 
elling by the light in the upper sky, and by the forms 
of the tree-stems, which every moment grew dimmer. 
At last the end came. We had just felt our way over 
what seemed to be a little run of water, when the old 
man sunk down, remarking, " I might as well die hero 
as anywhere," and was silent. 



112 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 

Suddenly night fell like a blanket on us. We 
could neither see the guide nor each other. We be- 
came at once conscious that miles of night on all sides 
shut us in. The sky was clouded over : there was n't 
a gleam of light to show us where to step. Our first 
thought was to build a fire, which would drive back 
the thick darkness into the woods, and boil some 
water for our tea. But it was too dark to use the axe. 
We scraped together leaves and twigs to make a 
blaze, and, as this failed, such dead sticks as we could 
find by groping about. The fire was only a tempo- 
rary affair, but it sufficed to boil a can of water. 
The water we obtained by feeling about the stones of 
the little run for an opening big enough to dip our 
cup in. The supper to be prepared was fortunately 
simple. It consisted of a decoction of tea and other 
leaves which had got into the pail, and a part of a loaf 
of bread. A loaf of bread which has been carried in 
a knapsack for a couple of days, bruised and handled 
and hacked at with a hunting-knife, becomes an unin- 
teresting object. But we ate of it with thankfulness, 
washed it down with hot fluid, and bitterly thought of 
the morrow. Would our old friend survive the 
night? Would he be in any condition to travel in 
the morning ? How were we to get out with him or 
without him? 

The old man lay silent in the bushes out of sight, 
and desired only to be let alone. We tried to tempt 
him with the offer of a piece of toast : it was no temp- 
tation. Tea, we thought, would revive him ; he re- 
fused it. A drink of brandy would certainly quicken 
his life : he could n't touch it. We were at the end of 
our resources. He seemed to think, that, if he were 
at home, and could get a bit of fried bacon, or a piece 



c 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 113 

of pie, he should be all right. We knew no more 
how to doctor him than if he had been a sick bear. 
He withdrew within himself, rolled himself up, so to 
speak, in his primitive habits, and waited for the heal- 
ing power of nature. Before our feeble fire disap- 
peared, we smoothed a level place near it for Phelps 
to lie on, and got him over to it. But it did n't suit s 
it was too open. In fact, at the moment some drops 
of rain fell. Eain was quite outside of our pro- 
gramme for the night. But the guide had an instinct 
about it ; and, while we were groping about some yards 
distant for a place where we could lie down, he 
crawled away into the darkness, and curled himself 
up amid the roots of a gigantic pine, very much as a 
bear would do, I suppose, with his back against the 
trunk, and there passed the night comparatively dry 
and comfortable ; but of this we knew nothing until 
morning, and had to trust to the assurance of a voice 
out of the darkness that he was all right. 

Our own bed where we spread our blankets was 
excellent in one respect, — there was no danger of 
tumbling out of it. At first the rain pattered gently 
on the leaves overhead, and we congratulated ourselves 
on the snugness of our situation. There was some- 
thing cheerful about this free life. We contrasted 
our condition with that of tired invalids who were 
tossing on downy beds, and wooing sleep in vain. 
Nothing was so wholesome and invigorating as this 
bivouac in the forest. But, somehow, sleep did not 
come. The rain had ceased to patter, and began to 
fall with a steady determination, a sort of soak, soak, 
all about us. In fact, it roared on the rubber blanket, 
and beat in our faces. The wind began to stir a 
little, and there was a moaning on high. Not con- 



114 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 

tented with dripping, the rain was driven into our 
faces. Another suspicious circumstance was no- 
ticed. Little rills of water got established along 
the sides under the blankets, cold, undeniable 
streams, that interfered with drowsiness. Pools 
of water settled on the bed ; and the chaplain had 
a habit of moving suddenly, and letting a quart or 
two inside, and down my neck. It began to be 
evident that we and our bed were probably the wet- 
test objects in the woods. The rubber was an excel- 
lent catch-all. There was no trouble about ventila- 
tion, but we found that we had established our quar- 
ters without any provision for drainage. There was 
not exactly a wild tempest abroad ; but there was a 
degree of liveliness in the thrashing limbs and the 
creaking of the tree-branches which rubbed against 
each other, and the pouring rain increased in volume 
and power of penetration. Sleep was quite out of the 
question, with so much to distract our attention. In 
fine, our misery became so perfect that we both broke 
out into loud and sarcastic laughter over the absurd- 
ity of our situation. We had subjected ourselves to 
all this forlornness simply for pleasure. Whether 
Old Phelps was still in existence, we could n't tell : 
we could get no response from him. With daylight, 
if he continued ill and could not move, our situation 
would be little improved. Our supplies were gone, 
we lay in a pond, a deluge of water was pouring down 
on us. This was summer recreation. The whole 
thing was so excessively absurd, that we laughed 
again, louder than ever. We had plenty of this sort 
of amusement. 

Suddenly through the night we heard a sort of 
reply that started us bolt upright. This was a pro- 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 115 

longed squawk. It was like the voice of no beast or 
bird with which we were familiar. At first it was 
distant, but it rapidly approached, tearing through the 
night and apparently through the tree-tops, like the 
harsh cry of a web-footed bird with a snarl in it ; in 
fact, as I said, a squawk. It came close to us, and 
then turned, and as rapidly as it came, fled away 
through the forest, and we lost the unearthly noise far 
up the mountain-slope. 

" What was that^ Phelps ? " we cried out. But no 
response came ; and we wondered if his spirit had 
been rent away, or if some evil genius had sought it, 
and then, baffled by his serene and philosophic spirit, 
had shot off into the void in rage and disappointment. 

The night had no other adventure. The moon at 
length coming up behind the clouds lent a spectral as- 
pect to the forest, and deceived us for a time into the 
notion that day was at hand ; but the rain never 
ceased, and we lay wishful and waiting, with no item 
of solid misery wanting that we could conceive. 

Day was slow a-coming, and did n't amount to 
much when it came, so heavy were the clouds ; but 
the rain slackened. We crawled out of our water- 
cure " pack," and sought the guide. To our infinite 
relief he announced himself not only alive, but in a 
going condition. I looked at my watch. It had 
stopped at five o'clock. I poured the water out of it, 
and shook it : but, not being constructed on the hy- 
draulic principle, it refused to go. Some hours later 
we encountered a huntsman, from whom I procured 
some gun-grease ; with this I filled the watch, and 
heated it in by the fire. This is the most effectual 
way of treating a delicate Genevan timepiece. 

The light disclosed fully the suspected fact that our 



IIG WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 

bed had been made in a slight depression : the under 
rubber blanket spread in this had prevented the rain 
from soaking into the ground, and we had been lying 
in what was in fact a well-contrived bath-tub. While 
Old Phelps was pulling himself together, and we 
were wringing some gallons of water out of our blan* 
kets, we questioned the old man about the " squawk,'^ 
and what bird was possessed of such a voice. It was 
not a bird at all, he said, but a cat, the black-cat of 
the woods, larger than the domestic animal, and an 
ugly customer, who is fond of fish, and carries a pelt 
that is worth two or three dollars in the market. 
Occasionally he blunders into a sable-trap ; and he 
is altogether hateful in his ways, and has the most 
uncultivated voice that is heard in the woods. We 
shall remember him as one of the least pleasant 
phantoms of that cheerful night when we lay in the 
storm, fearing any moment the advent to one of us of 
the grimmest messenger. 

We rolled up and shouldered our wet belongings, 
and, before the shades had yet lifted from the satu- 
rated bushes, pursued our march. It was a relief to 
be again in motion, although our progress was slow, 
and it was a question every rod whether the guide 
could go on. We had the day before us ; but if we 
did not find a boat at the inlet a day might not suffice, 
in the weak condition of the guide, to extricate us 
from our ridiculous position. There was nothing he^ 
roic in it ; we had no object ; it was merely, as it must 
appear by this time, a pleasure excursion, and we 
might be lost or perish in it without reward and with 
little sympathy. We had something like an hour and 
a half of stumbling through the swamp, when sud- 
denly we stood in the little trail ! Slight as it was, it 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 111 

appeared to us a very Broadway of Paradise, if broad 
ways ever lead thither. Phelps hailed it, and sank 
down in it like one reprieved from death. But the 
boat ? Leaving him, we quickly ran a quarter of a 
mile down to the inlet. The boat was there. Our 
shout to the guide would have roused him out of a 
death slumber. He came down the trail with the 
agility of an aged deer ; never was so glad a sound in 
his ear, he said, as that shout. It was in a very jubi- 
lant mood that we emptied the boat of water, pushed 
off, shipped the clumsy oars, and bent to the two-mile 
row through the black waters of the winding, desolate 
channel, and over the lake, whose dark waves were 
tossed a little in the morning breeze. The trunks of 
dead trees stand about this lake, and all its shores are 
ragged with ghastly drift-wood ; but it was open to 
the sky, and although the heavy clouds still obscured 
all the mountain ranges we had a sense of escape 

and freedom that almost made the melancholv scene 

%/ 

lovely. 

How lightly past hardship sits upon us ! All the 
misery of the night vanished, as if it had not been, in 
the shelter of the log cabin at Mud Pond, with dry 
clothes that fitted us as the skin of the bear fits him in 
the spring, a noble breakfast, a toasting fire, solicitude 
about our comfort, judicious sympathy with our suffer- 
ing, and willingness to hear the now growing tale of 
our adventure. Then came, in a day of absolute idle- 
ness, while the showers came and went, and the moun- 
tains appeared and disappeared in sun and storm, that 
perfect physical enjoyment which consists in a feeling 
of strength without any inclination to use it, and in a 
delicious languor which is too enjoyable to be surren- 
dered to sleep. 



74 
HOW SPEING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

BY A KEADER OF '"93." 



New England is the battle-ground of the seasons. 
It is La Vendee. To conquer it is only to begin the 
fight. When it is completely subdued, what kind of 
weather have you ? None whatever. 

What is this New England ? A country ? No : a 
camp. It is alternately invaded by the hyperborean 
legions and by the wilting sirens of the tropics. 
Icicles hang always on its northern heights ; its sea- 
coasts are fringed with mosquitoes. There is for a 
third of the year a contest between the icy air of the 
pole and the warm wind of the gulf. The result of 
this is a compromise: the compromise is called Thaw. 
It is the normal condition in New England. The 
New-Englander is a person who is always just about 
to be warm and comfortable. This is the stuff of 
which heroes and martyrs are made. A person thor- 
oughly heated or frozen is good for nothing. Look at 
the Bongos. Examine, on the map, the Dog-Rib na- 
tion. The New-Englander, by incessant activity, hopes 
to get warm. Edwards made his theology. Thank 
God, New England is not in Paris ! 

Hudson's Bay, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a whole 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 119 

zone of ice and walruses, make it unpleasant for New 
England. This icy cover, like tlie lid of a pot, is 
always suspended over it : when it shuts down, that is 
winter. This would be intolerable, were it not for 
the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is a benign, 
liquid force, flowing from under the ribs of the equa- 
tor, — a white knight of the South going up to battle 
the giant of the North. The two meet in New Eng- 
land and have it out there. 

This is the theory ; but in fact, the Gulf Stream is 
mostly a delusion as to New England. For Ireland 
it is quite another thing. Potatoes ripen in Ireland 
before they are planted in New England. That is 
the reason the Irish emigrate : they desire two crops 
the same year. The Gulf Stream gets shunted off 
from New England by the formation of the coast 
below : besides, it is too shallow to be of any service. 
Icebergs float down against its surface-current, and 
fill all the New-England air with the chill of death 
till June : after that the fogs drift down from New- 
foundland. There never was such a mockery as this 
Gulf Stream. It is like the English influence on 
France, on Europe. Pitt was an iceberg. 

Still New England survives. To what purpose? 
I say, as an example : the politician says, to produce 
" Poor Boys." Bah ! The poor boy is an anachro- 
nism in civilization. He is no longer poor, and he is 
not a boy. In Tartary they would hang him for 
sucking all the asses' milk that belongs to the chil- 
dren : in New England he has all the cream from the 
Public Cow. What can you expect in a country 
where one knows not to-day what the weather will be 
to-morrow ? Climate makes the man. Suppose he, 
too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where he has all 



120 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

climates, and is superior to all. Perhaps he will be- 
come the prophet, the seer, of his age, as he is its Poet. 
The New-Englander is the man without a climate. 
Why is his country recognized ? You won't find it 
on any map of Paris. 

And yet Paris is the universe. Strange anomaly ! 
The greater must include the less ; but how if the less 
leaks out? This sometimes happens. 

And yet there are phenomena in that country worth 
observing. One of them is the conduct of Nature 
from the 1st of March to the 1st of June, or, as some 
say, from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice. 
As Tourmalain remarked, " You 'd better observe the 
unpleasant than to be blind." This was in 802. Tour- 
malain is dead ; so is Gross Alain ; so is little Pee- 
Wee: we shall all be dead before things get any 
better. 

That is the law. Without revolution there is no- 
thing. What is revolution? It is turning society 
over, and putting the best underground for a fertilizer. 
Thus only will things grow. What has this to do with 
New England ? In the language of that flash of social 
lightning, Beranger, " May the Devil fly away with 
me if I can see ! " 

Let us speak of the period in the year in New Eng- 
land when winter appears to hesitate. Except in the 
calendar, the action is ironical ; but it is still decep- 
tive. The sun mounts high : it is above the horizon 
twelve hours at a time. The snow gradually sneaks 
away in liquid repentance. One morning it is gone, 
except in shaded spots and close by the fences. From 
about the trunks of the trees it has long departed : 
the tree is a living thing, and its growth repels it. 
The fence is dead, driven into the earth in a rigid line 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 121 

by man : the fence, in short, is dogma : icy prejudice 
lingers near it. 

The snow has disappeared; but the landscape is a 
ghastly sight, — bleached, dead. The trees are stakes ; 
the grass is of no color ; and the bare soil is not brown 
with a healthful brown ; life has gone out of it. Take 
up a piece of turf: it is a clod, without warmth, in- 
animate. Pull it in pieces : there is no hope in it : it 
is a part of the past ; it is the refuse of last year. This 
is the condition to which winter has reduced the land- 
scape. When the snow, which was a pall, is removed, 
you see how ghastly it is. The face of the country is 
sodden. It needs now only the south wind to sweep 
over it, full of the damp breath of death ; and that 
begins to blow. No prospect would be more dreary. 

And yet the south wind fills credulous man with joy. 
He opens the window. He goes out, and catches cold. 
He is stirred by the mysterious coming of something. 
If there is sign of change nowhere else, we detect it in 
the newspaper. In sheltered corners of that truculent 
instrument for the diffusion of the prejudices of the 
few among the many begin to grow the violets of ten- 
der sentiment, the early greens of yearning. The 
poet feels the sap of the new year before the marsh- 
willow. He blossoms in advance of the catkins. Man 
is greater than Nature. The poet is greater than man : 
he is nature on two legs, — ambulatory. 

At first there is no appearance of conflict. The 
winter garrison seems to have withdrawn. The invad- 
ing hosts of the South are entering without opposi- 
tion. The hard ground softens ; the sun lies warm 
upon the southern bank, and water oozes from its base. 
If you examine the buds of the lilac and the flowering 
shrubs, you cannot say that they are swelling ; but the 



122 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

varnish with which they were coated in the fall to keep 
out the frost seems to be cracking. If the sugar-maple 
is hacked, it will bleed, — the pure white blood of 
Nature. 

At the close of a sunny day the western sky has a 
softened aspect : its color, we say, has warmth in it. 
On such a day you may meet a caterpillar on the foot- 
path, and turn out for him. The house-fly thaws out ; 
a company of cheerful wasps take possession of a 
chamber-window. It is oppressive indoors at night, 
and the window is raised. A flock of millers, born 
out of time, flutter in. It is most unusual weather for 
the season : it is so every year. The delusion is com- 
plete, when, on a mild evening, the tree-toads open 
their brittle-brattle chorus on the edge of the pond. 
The citizen asks his neighbor, '' Did you hear the 
frogs last night ? " That seems to open the new world. 
One thinks of his childhood and its innocence, and 
of his first loves. It fills one with sentiment and a 
tender longing, this voice of the tree-toad. Man is a 
strange being. Deaf to the prayers of friends, to the 
sermons and warnings of the church, to the calls of 
duty, to the pleadings of his better nature, he is 
touched by the tree-toad. The signs of the spring 
multiply. The passer in the street in the evening sees 
the maid-servant leaning on the area-gate in sweet con- 
verse with some one leaning on the other side ; or in 
the park, which is still too damp for anything but 
true affection, he sees her seated by the side of one 
who is able to protect her from the policeman, and 
hears her sigh, " How sweet it is to be with those we 
love to be with ! " 

All this is very well ; but next morning the news- 
paper nips these early buds of sentiment. The tele- 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 123 

graph announces, " Twenty feet of snow at Ogden, on 
the Pacific Eoad ; winds blowing a gale at Omaha, 
and snow still falling ; mercury frozen at Duluth ; 
storm-signals at Port Huron." 

Where now are your tree-toads, your young love, 
your early season ? Before noon it rains ; by three 
o'clock it hails ; before night the bleak storm-cloud 
of the northwest envelops the sky ; a gale is raging, 
whirling about a tempest of snow. By morning the 
snow is drifted in banks, and two feet deep on a level. 
Early in the seventeenth century, Drebbel of Holland 
invented the weather-glass. Before that, men had 
suffered without knowing the degree of their suffering. 
A century later, Romer hit upon the idea of using 
mercury in a thermometer; and Fahrenheit con- 
structed the instrument which adds a new because 
distinct terror to the weather. Science names and 
registers the ills of life ; and yet it is a gain to know 
the names and habits of our enemies. It is with some 
satisfaction in our knowledge that we say the ther- 
mometer marks zero. 

In fact, the wild beast called Winter untamed has 
returned, and taken possession of New England. Na- 
ture, giving up her melting mood, has retired into 
dumbness and white stagnation. But we are wise. 
We say it is better to have it now than later. We 
have a conceit of understanding things. 

Extraordinary blindness ! 

The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between the 
two the snow is uncomfortable. Compelled to go, it 
decides to go suddenly. The first day there is slush 
with rain ; the second daj^, mud with hail ; the third 
day, a flood with sunshine. The thermometer declares 
that the temperature is delightful. Man shivers and 



124 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

sneezes. His neighbor dies of some disease newly 
named by science ; but he dies all the same as if it 
had n't been newly named. Science has not discovered 
any name that is not fatal. 

This is called the breaking-up of winter. 

Nature seems for some days to be in doubt, not 
exactly able to stand still, not daring to put forth any- 
thing tender. Man says that the worst is over. If he 
should live a thousand years, he would be deceived 
every year. And this is called an age of scepticism. 
Man never believed in so many things as now : he 
never believed so much in himself. As to Nature, he 
knows her secrets : he can predict what she will do. 
He communicates with the next world by means of an 
alphabet which he has invented. He talks with souls 
at the other end of the spirit-wire. To be sure, neither 
of them says anything; but they talk. Is not that 
something ? He suspends the law of gravitation as to 
his own body — he has learned how to evade it — as 
tyrants suspend the legal writs of habeas corpus. 
When Gravitation asks for his body, she cannot have 
it. He says of himself, " I am infallible ; I am sub- 
lime." He believes all these things. He is master of 
the elements. Shakspeare sends him a poem just 
made, and as good a poem as the man could write 
himself. And yet this man — he goes out of doors 
without his overcoat, catches cold, and is buried in 
three days. " On the 21st of January," exclaimed 
Mercier, " all kings felt for the backs of their necks." 
This might be said of all men in New England in the 
spring. This is the season that all the poets celebrate. 
Let us suppose that once, in Thessaly, there was a 
genial spring, and there was a poet who sang of it. 
All later poets have sung the same song. " Voila 
tout I " That is the root of poetry. 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 125 

Another delusion. We hear toward evening, high 
in air, the "conk" of the wild-geese. Looking 
up, you see the black specks of that adventurous tri- 
angle, winging along in rapid flight northward. Per- 
haps it takes a wide returning sweep, in doubt ; but 
it disappears in the north. There is no mistaking 
that sign. This unmusical " conk " is sweeter than 
the ''kerchunk" of the bull-frog. Probably these 
birds are not idiots, and probably they turned back 
south again after spying out the nakedness of the 
land ; but they have made their sign. Next day there 
is a rumor that somebody has seen a blue-bird. This 
rumor, unhappily for the bird, which will freeze to 
death, is confirmed. In less than three days every- 
body has seen a blue-bird ; and favored people have 
heard a robin, or rather the yellow-breasted thrush, 
misnamed a robin in America. This is no doubt 
true : for angle-worms have been seen on the surface 
of the ground ; and, wherever there is anything to eat, 
the robin is promptly on hand. About this time you 
notice, in protected, sunny spots, that the grass has a 
little color. But you say that it is the grass of last 
fall. It is very difficult to tell when the grass of last 
fall became the grass of this spring. It looks " warmed 
over." The green is rusty. The lilac-buds have cer- 
tainly swollen a little, and so have those of the soft 
maple. In the rain the grass does not brighten as 
you think it ought to, and it is only when the rain 
turns to snow that you see any decided green color by 
contrast with the white. The snow gradually covers 
everything very quietly, however. Winter comes 
back without the least noise or bustle, tireless, mali- 
cious, implacable. Neither party in the fight now 
makes much fuss over it ; and you might think that 



126 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

Nature had surrendered altogether, if you did not find 
about this time in the woods, on the edge of a snow- 
bank, the modest blossoms of the trailing arbutus, 
shedding their delicious perfume. The bravest are 
always the tenderest, says the poet. The season, in 
its blind way, is trying to express itself. 

And it is assisted. There is a cheerful chatter in 
the trees. The blackbirds have come, and in numbers, 
households of them, villages of them, — communes, 
rather. They do not believe in God, these black- 
birds. They think they can take care of themselves. 
We shall see. But they are well informed. They 
arrived just as the last snow-bank melted. One can- 
not say now that there is not greenness in the grass ; 
not in the wide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and 
banks sloping south. The dark-spotted leaves of 
the dog-tooth violet begin to show. Even Fahrenheit's 
contrivance joins in the upward movement : the mer- 
cury has suddenly gone up from thirty degrees to 
sixty-five degrees. It is time for the ice-man. Ice 
has no sooner disappeared than we desire it. 

There is a smile, if one may say so, in the blue sky, 
and there is softness in the south wind. The song- 
sparrow is singing in the apple-tree. Another bird- 
note is heard, — two long, musical whistles, liquid but 
metallic. A brown bird this one, 'darker than the 
song-sparrow, and without the latter's light stripes, 
and smaller, yet bigger than the queer little chipping- 
bird. He wants a familiar name, this sweet singer, 
who appears to be a sort of sparrow. He is such a 
contrast to the blue-jays, who have arrived in a pas- 
sion, as usual, screaming and scolding, the elegant, 
spoiled beauties ! They wrangle from morning till 
night, these beautiful, high-tempered aristocrats. 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 127 

Encouraged by the birds, by the bursting of the 
lilac-buds, by the peeping-up of the crocuses, by tradi- 
tion, by the sweet fiutterings of a double hope, another 
sign appears. This is the Easter bonnets, most de- 
lightful flowers of the year, emblems of innocence, 
hope, devotion. Alas that they have to be worn under 
umbrellas, so much thought, freshness, feeling, ten- 
derness, have gone into them ! And a northeast 
storm of rain, accompanied with hail, comes to crown 
all these virtues with that of self-sacrifice. The frail 
hat is offered up to the implacable season. In fact, 
Nature is not to be forestalled nor hurried in this way. 
Things cannot be pushed. Nature hesitates. The 
woman who does not hesitate in April is lost. The 
appearance of the bonnets is premature. The black- 
birds see it. They assemble. For two days they 
hold a noisy convention, with high debate, in the tree- 
tops. Something is going to happen. 

Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occur. 
There is a wind called Auster, another called Eurus, 
another called Septentrio, another Meridies, besides 
Aquilo, Vulturnus, Africus. There are the eight 
great winds of the classical dictionary, — arsenal of 
mystery and terror and of the unknown, — besides 
the wind Euroaquilo of St. Luke. This is the wind 
that drives an apostle wishing to gain Crete upon the 
African Syrtis. If St. Luke had been tacking to get 
to Hyannis, this wind would have forced him into 
Holmes's Hole. The Euroaquilo is no respecter of 
persons. 

These winds, and others unnamed and more terrible, 
circle about New England. They form a ring about 
it : they lie in wait on its borders, but only to spring 
upon it and harry it. They follow each other in con- 



128 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

tracting circles, in whirlwinds, in maelstroms of the 
atmosphere : they meet and cross each other, all at a 
moment. This New England is set apart : it is the ex- 
ercise-ground of the weather. Storms bred elsewhere 
come here full-grown : they come in couples, in quar- 
tets, in choruses. If New England were not mostly 
rock, these winds would carry it off ; but they would 
bring it all back again, as happens with the sandy 
portions. What sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Af ricus 
brings back. When the air is not full of snow, it is 
full of dust. This is called one of the compensations 
of Nature. 

This is what happened after the convention of the 
blackbirds : A moaning south wind brought rain ; a 
southwest wind turned the rain to snow ; what is 
called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted the snow ; a 
north wind sent the mercury far below freezing. Salt 
added to snow increases the evaporation and the cold. 
This was the office of the northeast wind : it made the 
snow damp, and increased its bulk ; but then it rained 
a little, and froze, thawing at the same time. The air 
was full of fog and snow and rain. And then the 
wind changed, went back round the circle, reversing 
everything, like dragging a cat by its tail. The mer- 
cury approached zero. This was nothing uncommon. 
We know all these winds. We are familiar with the 
different " forms of water." 

All this was only the prologue, the overture. If 
one might be permitted to speak scientifically, it was 
only the tuning of the instruments. The opera was 
to come, — the Flying Dutchman of the air. 

There is a wind called Euroclydon : it would be one 
of the Eumenides ; only they are women. It is half- 
brother to the gigantic storm-wind of the equinox. 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 129 

The Euroclydon is not a wind : it is a monster. Its 
breath is frost. It has snow in its hair. It is some- 
thing terrible. It peddles rheumatism, and plants 
consumption. 

The Euroclydon knew just the moment to strike into 
the discord of the weather in New England. From 
its lair about Point Desolation, from the glaciers of 
the Greenland continent, sweeping round the coast, 
leaving wrecks in its track, it marched right athwart 
the other conflicting winds, churning them into a fury, 
and inaugurating chaos. It was the Marat of the 
elements. It was the revolution marching into the 
"dreaded wood of La Sandraie." 

Let us sum it all up in one word : it was something 
for which there is no name. 

Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves 
wrecks. What does it leave on land ? Funerals. 
When it subsides. New England is prostrate. It has 
left its legacy : this legacy is coughs and patent medi- 
cines. This is an epic ; this is destiny. You think 
Providence is expelled out of New England ? Listen ! 

Two days after Euroclydon, I found in the woods 
the hepatica — earliest of wildwood flowers, evidently 
not intimidated by the wild work of the armies tram- 
pling over New England — daring to hold up its ten- 
der blossom. One could not but admire the quiet 
pertinacity of Nature. She had been painting the 
grass under the snow. In spots it was vivid green. 
There was a mild rain, — mild, but chilly. The 
clouds gathered, and broke away in light, fleecy masses. 
There was a softness on the hills. The birds suddenly 
were on every tree, glancing through the air, filling it 
with song, sometimes shaking rain-drops from their 
wings. The cat brings in one in his mouth. He 



130 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

thinks the season has begun, and the game-laws are 
off. He is fond of Nature, this cat, as we all are : 
he wants to possess it. At four o'clock in the morn- 
ing there is a grand dress-rehearsal of the birds. Not 
all the pieces of the orchestra have arrived ; but there 
are enough. The grass-sparrow has come. This is 
certainly charming. The gardener comes to talk 
about seeds : he uncovers the strawberries and the 
grape-vines, salts the asparagus-bed, and plants the 
peas. You ask if he planted them with a shot-gun. 
In the shade there is still frost in the ground. Na- 
ture, in fact, still hesitates, puts forth one hepatica at 
a time, and waits to see the result; pushes up the 
grass slowly, perhaps draws it in at night. 

This indecision we call Spring. 

It becomes painful. It is like being on the rack 
for ninety days, expecting every day a reprieve. Men 
grow hardened to it, however. 

This is the order with man, — hope, surprise, be- 
wilderment, disgust, facetiousness. The people in 
New England finally become facetious about spring. 
This is the last stage : it is the most dangerous. When 
a man has come to make a jest of misfortune, he is 
lost. ''It bores me to die," said the journalist Carra 
to the headsman at the foot of the guillotine : " I 
would like to have seen the continuation." One is 
also interested to see how spring is going to turn out. 

A day of sun, of delusive bird-singing, sight of the 
mellow earth, — all these begin to beget confidence. 
The night, even, has been warm. But what is this in 
the morning journal at breakfast ? — " An area of low 
pressure is moving from the Tortugas north." You 
shudder. 

What is this Low Pressure itself, — it ? It is some- 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 131 

thing frightful, low, crouching, creeping, advancing ; 
it is a foreboding ; it is misfortune by telegraph ; it is 
the " '93 " of the atmosphere. 

This low pressure is a creation of Old Prob. What 
is that ? Old Prob. is the new deity of the Ameri- 
cans, greater than ^olus, more despotic than Sans- 
Culotte. The wind is his servitor, the lightning his 
messenger. He is a mystery made of six parts elec- 
tricity, and one part ''guess." This deity is wor- 
shipped by the Americans ; his name is on every 
man's lips first in the morning ; he is the Franken- 
stein of modern science. Housed at Washington, his 
business is to direct the storms of the whole country 
upon New England, and to give notice in advance. 
This he does. Sometimes he sends the storm, and 
then gives notice. This is mere playfulness on his 
part : it is all one to him. His great power is in the 
low pressure. 

On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills of 
the Presidio, along the Eio Grande, low pressure is 
bred ; it is nursed also in the Atchafalaya swamps of 
Louisiana ; it moves by the way of Thibodeaux and 
Bonnet Carre. The southwest is a magazine of 
atmospheric disasters. Low pressure may be no worse 
than the others : it is better known, and is most used 
to inspire terror. It can be summoned any time also 
from the everglades of Florida, from the morasses of 
the Okeechobee. 

When the New-Englander sees this in his newspa- 
per, he knows what it means. He has twenty-four 
hours' warning ; but what can he do ? Nothing but 
watch its certain advance by telegraph. He suffers 
in anticipation. That is what Old Prob. has brought 
about, — suffering by anticipation. This low pressure 



132 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

advances against the wind. The wind is from the 
northeast. Nothing could be more unpleasant than 
a northeast wind? Wait till low pressure joins it. 
Together they make spring in New England. A 
northeast storm from the southwest ! — there is no 
bitterer satire than this. It lasts three days. After 
that the weather changes into something winter-like. 

A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops 
along the snow to the dining-room window, and, turn- 
ing his little head aside, looks up. He is hungry and 
cold. Little Minnette, clasping her hands behind her 
back, stands and looks at him, and says, " Po' birdie ! " 
They appear to understand each other. The sparrow 
gets his crumbs ; but he knows too much to let Minn- 
ette get hold of him. Neither of these little things 
could take care of itself in a New-England spring — 
not in the depths of it. This is what the father of 
Minnette, looking out of the window upon the wide 
waste of snow, and the evergreens bent to the ground 
with the weight of it, says : " It looks like the depths 
of spring." To this has man come : to his facetious- 
ness has succeeded sarcasm. It is the first of May. 

Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. 
The birds open the morning with a lively chorus. In 
spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low pressure and the 
government bureau, things have gone forward. By 
the roadside, where the snow has just melted, the 
grass is of the color of emerald. The heart leaps to 
see it. On the lawn there are twenty robins, lively, 
noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breasts contrast 
with the tender green of the newly-springing clover 
and herd's-grass. If they would only stand still, we 
might think the dandelions had blossomed. On an 
evergreen-bough, looking at them, sits a graceful bird, 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 133 

whose back is bluer than the sky. Thjere is a red tint 
on the tips of the boughs of the«hard maple. With 
Nature, color is life. See, already, green, yellow, 
blue, red ! In a few days — is it not so ? — through 
the green masses of the trees will flash the orange 
of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager ; perhaps to- 
morrow. 

But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It 
is almost clear overhead : but the clouds thicken on 
the horizon ; they look leaden ; they threaten rain. 
It certainly will rain : the air feels like rain or snow. 
By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate 
cry of the phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at 
first ; but it soon drives in swerving lines, for the 
wind is from the southwest, from the west, from the 
northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinary winds 
of New England), from all points of the compass. 
The fine snow becomes rain ; it becomes large snow ; 
it melts as it falls ; it freezes as it falls. At last a 
storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak 
scene. 

During the night there is a change. It thunders 
and lightens. Toward morning there is a brilliant 
display of aurora borealis. This is a sign of colder 
weather. 

The gardener is in despair ; so is the sportsman. 
The trout take no pleasure in biting in such weather. 
Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from 
the paper of last year, saying that this is the most 
severe spring in thirty years. Every one, in fact, 
believes that it is, and also that next year the spring 
will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures. 

And with reason : he trusts his eves, and not his 
instinct. During this most sour weather of the year, 



134 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

the anemone blossoms ; and, almost immediately after, 
the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth vio- 
let, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain 
and snow, and all discouragement. Nature pushes on 
her forces with progressive haste and rapidity. Before 
one is aware, all the lawns and meadows are deeply 
green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In a 
burst of sunshine the cherry-trees are white, the Judas- 
tree is pink, the hawthorns give a sweet smell. The 
air is full of sweetness ; the world, of color. 

In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the 
ground is strewed with the white-and-pink blossoms 
from the apple-trees. The next day the mercury 
stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come. 

There was no Spring. 

The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre 
thought the Revolution was over in the beginning of 
his last Thermidor. He lost his head after that. 

When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and 
the cucumbers have four leaves, a malicious frost steals 
down from the north and kills them in a night. 

That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then 
mounts to ninety degrees. The season has been long, 
but, on the whole, successful. Many people survive it. 



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